2001 Dolphin chasis battery.......dead???

Not for engine battery.

A chassis battery that went dead sitting for a year is a liability. Get the battery load tested. Because it is going to strand you. You have two choices the simplest being to maintain your new battery with a battery tender or clone.

cdl2 wrote:

The coach started right up after that.

Terminology is confusing this report.

Regardless of the style of your RV, the engine is NOT in the "coach" which is the living area.

The "chassis" contains the engine and it's starting battery.

Some are designed to keep up both batteries, chassis and coach, when plugged into shore power but some are not.

And the failure of something called a "battery solenoid" sometimes causes that not to happen when it should. That kind of failure can also cause the coach (house) batteries to not charge when going down the road.

Don’t even bother to test it. Buy a new battery.

I have a wire thing I made up using two cig plugs one at each end. When on shore power for a long time, I stick one in the dash cig lighter socket and the other in the 12v socket that came with the television antenna panel overhead, which is on house battery.

2001 dolphin.. Answer is possibly. IT does have an on board charge for the HOUSE (We call it a converter) but the proper question is does it have a bi-directional isolator.. and I do not know.. I can tell you how to find out however.

Park it unpluged for 1/2 to 2 hours. Hook a digital volt meter to both house and chassis battery (2 meters or one meter and write down the readings)

Plug in. Come back in an hour...

If you get like 12.5/12.5 the first time and 13.5 13.5 the second (Anything over 13) you have a BIRD. IF the 2nd gets you 13.5 on house and 12.5 on chassis you do not.

Trick-L-Start. hooks up with 3 wires at the isolator solenoid. that's the reverse direction charger.

IO have to ask a stupid question. You ever replace the chassis battery? 2001 is way past any battery's lifespan.

The battery that's in there now was replaced in the summer of 2016.

BFL13 wrote:
I have a wire thing I made up using two cig plugs one at each end. When on shore power for a long time, I stick one in the dash cig lighter socket and the other in the 12v socket that came with the television antenna panel overhead, which is on house battery.

I went a little further to prevent over-charging the chassis battery.

I put a regular 6 amp automatic battery charger in the compartment with the A/V equipment hard-wired to the chassis battery. The charger is plugged into an old school mechanical lamp timer set to come on for only 2 hours a day.

Whenever it's connected to shore power the chassis gets an up to 6 amp charge for a couple of hours a day.

If it's parked for long in the winter I correct the time of day on the timer so that the charge cycle occurs in the wee hours of the morning when the temps are the coldest.

I do worry some about putting the engine battery in parallel with my AGM house batteries for an extended time. I don't see a threat of overcharging the engine battery staying at the house batts' Float voltage in the 13s.

To avoid putting the engine and house batteries in parallel, I have another way, more like the usual trickle method. A small charger that has a cig plug attachment as an option to the clamps attachment. With that, I plug the charger into the 120v receptacle overhead (meant for entertainment things) and plug its cig plug into the dash lighter socket. This charger holds 13.4v constant after a short time at 14.2.

http://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/motomaster-eliminator-intelligent-battery-charger-2a-0111506p.html#srp