Battery loss of charge and how long to recharge.

Add a nice solar system.

You should be OK although the WFCO is anemic at best for quickly recharging depleted batteries. You could opt for a portable charger with better charging characteristics or call Randy at bestconverters.com for an easy upgrade to your existing converter. All this can be figured out with some driveway camping and a voltmeter, you could simulate the conditions you expect at Yellowstone. We have a similar set-up and often RV in frigid temps running the genny less than a couple of hours daily to get batteries back to where they can provide another day of service. Adding at least 100 watts (100 watts per battery is better) of solar will greatly reduce genny use for simply charging batteries. Have a great time at Yellowstone!!!

Braces wrote:
Suggestions solicited.

Start with BFL's recommendation and test your WFCO to see if it will bulk charge @ 14.4 volts. If it won't (and it probably won't) then my suggestion is to simply turn it off and invest in a different charger or deck mount converter / charger that will. Sure, you could replace your WFCO with another converter that will do 14.4 or even replace just the guts of the WFCO but I'd only do that if the WFCO was pooched, otherwise it's much simpler to leave the WFCO where it is and just turn it off. Mount the new charger close to the batteries as is practical and connect to them with cable at least 4 gauge or better. The front pass through cargo compartment is an ideal location but a deck mount may take up more space than you'd prefer ... if that's the case take a look at portable smart chargers such as the NOCO Genius G26000 or CTEK Multi US 25000 which are both about as simple to use as it gets. Run your genset when you can in the morning before you leave for the day and again in the evening when you return - hey, you do what you can do. ;)

We had a similar set up when we went to Yellowstone in mid September (2 6 volts)
We ran the furnace quite a bit, as we even had snow one evening.

We just turned on the generator when we left in the AM (around 8AM) and let it run. When we got back, it was out of gas and had stopped and the batteries were charged. We did this about every other day.
It was a small inverter generator, so fairly quiet, and run in the eco-mode, and most folks aren't in the campground during the day anyway, they are out exploring like we were. We didn't hear any complaints from neighbors. There were other generators running in the campground as well. Maybe this was the wrong thing for us to do, but it worked for us. We were at Yellowstone a little over a week.

2oldman wrote:
^ There's your EE degree.

Without an inverter I think you'll be just fine without much generator time. That's the best guess I'm going to make.

Camp with those conditions near home and you'll advance to a Masters Degree. :B

^ There's your EE degree.

Without an inverter I think you'll be just fine without much generator time. That's the best guess I'm going to make.

Try it at home to see if the WFCO will do 14.4v or not. (See that other thread on that wrt 13.2v trigger.) Times to recharge using that 14.4v or so (if it only does 13.6v you need to solve that before heading out) Pick your amps level on the left and go in--