Battery and Solar woes

Qwazert wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:

Both "chargers" you are using are toys, it will take weeks to months to fully charge those T105s and even then, I doubt they will be more than 98% charged..

Your "converter" in your RV should be capable of at a min of 35A which will speed charge your batteries compared to those pea shooters provided the converter is capable of switching to bulk charge mode of 14.4V.

You are safe to keep both T105s in series for 12V charging, there is no need to break them apart like you are doing unless the cells clearly show discrepancies in the specific gravity reading between the two batteries.

Nothing like doing things the hard way :S

This is the only way I've done it so far...in the past 15 years of using solar panels, this is the first time I've encountered any issues.
Nonetheless, I will keep these batteries on the chargers until the specific gravity reaches 1.277 (100% charged as indicated by the spec sheets for this battery), then I will return them to service.
Hopefully, I haven't caused irreversible damage by under-charging them.

You need to consider "changing up" what you are doing.

You are working much harder than necessary by disconnecting, removing, moving, charging separate, then moving, reinstalling and rewiring them. It may have worked well for you for yrs, but there IS a better way that does not require all that work.

You do have a built in charger, although the one you listed is made by WFCO which is a multistage converter, it is somewhat less than ideal since there have been reports that it often does not go into bulk mode (14.4V) and gets hung in 13.6V mode. You reported the last two digits of the the model number which is 55.. That is the amperage the converter can supply.. Yep, you have a 55A CHARGER..

The trick is to see if the voltage at the battery terminals goes above 13.6V while on shore power, if it does then you are golden to let the converter do the work once you get home or while camping with a gen running.

The voltage is important, those small chargers you are using will not be able to provide 14.4V until the amps taper down significantly (like less than 1/2A).

One of the issues with WFCO converters is they monitor the battery voltage and the current being drawn and if the voltage is above a certain threshold and you have enough parasitic phantom current loads the bulk mode never gets tripped. This problem can often be resolved but that often requires removing all of the parasitic phantom loads plus upgrading the wire size from converter to the batteries..

Additionally with having solar feeding the batteries that may present more challenges to getting the WFCO to trigger bulk mode voltage.

You can save a lot of back breaking labor by considering more solar and perhaps replacing the WFCO converter with a Progressive Dynamics converter with Charge wizard.. PDs just work and is what I am using on my rig..

My batteries love the PD I have and thank me with 9+ yrs of service.. I abuse them pretty hard since the batteries must supply power 24/7 to my home fridge conversion.. I can run the fridge, furnace and some lights for 20hrs before recharging.. I have no solar at all.. If I added 300W of solar I could easily run off of the same batteries for a 3 day weekend and never have to run a generator.