Forum Discussion

Blakedaniels's avatar
Blakedaniels
Explorer
Jun 08, 2020

Battery issue

I have a 2001 Monaco Windsor. My brother was out West in it last year and it seem that anything that could happen, did happen. The alternator was overcharging so it blew up the brand new chassis battery, then the solenoid Between the chassis and house battery disconnect switches burnt out, then the magnets on my Onan generator let loose. A new alternator, new battery and new solenoid we’re installed in New Mexico, i’m still up in the air about what I’m going to do about the generator, the repair job seems to be between $5000 and $6000 and a new generator is a little more than $10,000. This spring before I pulled it out of the storage yard I decided to put a new floor in the front area of the RV. After I install the floor I took about a week break to work on my mothers deck, when I return to RV a week later to reinstall the two front seats I had no power at the ignition. After doing some testing I found out the 4 house batteries were dead and the chassis battery was fully charged, I did a load test on the chassis battery and that was fine. I bought 4 new house batteries (They were 2 years old), I installed them and the RV started right up. My question is, did wires get reversed on the solenoid that was installed in New Mexico or what. I thought even if your house batteries are dead you should always be able to start your rig with a fully charged chassis battery even though your house batteries are dead. Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated.
  • BFL13's avatar
    BFL13
    Explorer II
    Jun 08, 2020
    It got from NM to your storage ok so would that say the wiring is not backwards?

    Ignition (run circuit) only from house batts and not from engine batt suggests the AUX start switch is closed somehow. There would not be that much of a drain on the house batts so they would be dead after a week in storage, so that is odd.

    Do you have the three-way AUX dash switch or no dash AUX start at all, and you just get the house batts and engine batts in parallel every time you turn the ignition on? (My Class C is like that, but others have the more complicated three-way set-up--it could make a difference in what might be wrong there)

    (We had a thread or two about all this dash switch business a few months ago if it is relevant)

    Going back to the alternator failure, it can happen if the house batts are so low, and the engine batt is not in the picture to make the alternator voltage drop to a float voltage, that the alternator keeps putting out high amps to the house for so long, the alternator gets too hot and fails ( something like that anyway)---so I wonder if what is happening now is from the same thing that went wrong back then.

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