Battery Protection

pauldub wrote:
I'm planning to make a battery tray that attaches to one of the frame rails under my class C. Do I need to bother with protecting FLA batteries from road spray at all? Is there any possibility that road spray will make its way into the batteries through the cap vents? I could put them in a plastic battery box but that's not very helpful for maintaining the batts.

The stuff likely won't get inside the batteries but your batteries will be covered with this junk and could cause problems with shorting under wet conditions. I just completed 9 days to Montana and back mostly in the rain both directions. We also live on a dirt road 3 miles from the nearest paved road. The dirt road was wet and I drove no more than 20 mph. The under side of my camper is covered to in road debris.

I would recommend it. Believe it or not WATER (And by that I mean PURE water) does not conduct electricity.

But add salt. and watch the amps flow and the amp hours vanish.

pauldub wrote:
AGM ain't gonna happen unless they quickly become more price competitive with FLA.

They won't. Costs more to make them.

Thanks for the photos Ken.

Hi Paul. Here are a couple of pictures showing the hanging battery compartment Winnie put in the Fuse. The light tan object on the right side of the pics is the end of the propane tank. It doesn't show up real well but behind the batteries is the exhaust pipe and the drive shaft. And yes, the batteries are exposed.





Sorry the second one is a bit overexposed but hopefully you can see enough detail. As you can see, checking the electrolyte level is almost impossible. Adding water and using a hydrometer requires removing the batteries. Mex's idea of recombinant caps might be a good one. Also, if you could find a central watering system for the number of cells you will have, that might work. For me these tinker-toy group 24 (not so) "Deep Cycle" batteries will probably be replaced with 2 AGM GC-2s when I kill them.

Good luck.

Ken

Pull-out roller bearing trays are not cheap. I had to install a sailboat-like floor panel in my bus so I could pull it up and then lay on the floor to check my L-16 batteries. It isn't fun. So I purchased 12 recombinant battery cell caps which helped a lot but are $$$

Try this

Remove and shine-up battery cable terminals and battery posts

Use felt rings which are like washers over the posts.

Silicone dielectric grease. Rub it into the washers both sides

Then encase top bottom and sides of battery terminals with the grease. It will last many years.

Sure Paul I'll be happy to. Let me charge the camera battery. The DSLR will take much better pictures than a phone.

Ken

I figured a watering system would be the way to go. Ken, can you share a photo of the battery installation on your Fuse?

pauldub, Optimistic Paranoid is correct. Mounted as you are proposing, maintenance will be very difficult on flooded-cell batteries. It sounds like what you are talking about is almost exactly what Winnebago did in the Fuse 23A which we just traded for. If you'd like, I could take a picture or two to show you one OEM installation which is hung from the frame.

Ken

Truck and trailer now traded for a Winnebago Fuse 23A.

Get a battery watering system. I use flow-rite.com available on Amazon. You can gang the units together for how many cells you need.

I would use a battery box as I would also be concerned about road salt and especially with the use of Mag-Cloride in some states.