I'm gonna run new cable to converter.. rear of rig!

Ben,

My trailer came with a WFCO converter as well and I could never get it to properly charge either. Wire size was part of the problem, but not the whole story. As others have suggested, you may have better success by putting in a different charger.

I decided to abandon the charger portion of the WFCO converter and just use it as a power distribution (AC and DC) panel. To do this, I removed the AC input to the charger portion of the converter and the DC output fuse (prior to the smaller distribution fuses). I then put a new charger, solar charger, and inverter under the bed in the front of my trailer with parallel 1/0 cables (~4/0 equivalent) to my batteries, and ran two 10 AWG (I have a 30 Amp system) cables up to the new charger under the bed with a Levitron 1288 DPDT (center off) 30 amp switch to serve as a manual transfer switch (so I can power the whole trailer with either shore power or the inverter).

Unfortunately, it's hard to do all this in small steps. Assuming you have the space close to your batteries like I do, you could just add a new converter with a heavy cable to the battery, and a transfer switch with the two AC lines back to the old converter and save the rest for later. If you never plan to have a whole house inverter, you could skip the transfer switch and just run one fused 120VAC line to a outlet at this location that the new charger plugs into.

Hope this helps,

Steve

35 feet between converter and batts, is a ridiculously long distance, and will never be right no matter what cable you run. Why not put a decent (not wfco) converter near the batteries ? Then all ya need is 12ga wire to feed it.

bigcitypopo wrote:
two 12v standard interstate grp24 batteries, and wfco 8955... it never seems to go into boost mode. the wire has 19 strands of copper in it... seems thin

That is too much converter, max for those batteries is 55 amps. Upgrade to a pair of GC-2s Max there is in the 65-70 amp range.

Consider a different converter too, WFFCO's are China fail-o-matics.

I like the baby steps here... We have been camping off the power grid since 2008 in my OFF-ROAD POPUP setup and finally mastered the "running off the batteries" pretty good now. I can truly say we are very successful in our style of camping which is alot more than just having a couple of lights on in the trailer...

Now that I know what to expect I think it is time for us to also start looking into getting some additional power resources from SOLAR PANELS. To me the generator method is the only true 'must have' resource as it will always be available to use for you no matter what the circumstances are (Rain or Shine).

I am looking at the SOLAR PANEL addition to supplement the charging of my batteries and reduce generator operations. Our setup requires a battery bank re-charge as quick as it will work each day when allowed to run the generator. The SOLAR panels in my case will provide a slower battery bank re-charge during the remaining high sun day. A typical 120WATT Solar panel will only produce around 5-6AMPS of usable DC CURRENT in high SUN. I'm guessing I will only have HIGH SUN for 5-6 hours a day here on the East side of the US if that... If you can get ahead of the battery drain curve it would be real great just trickle charging the battery bank with solar panels. IN my case of pulling around 20AMPS from the batteries between 8PM to 11PM in addition to a parasitic battery drain of around 1AMP for the other 21 hours in a day will most likely never allow me to just trickle charge the batteries. This daily power drain drops me to 12.0VDC around 8AM each day now which puts me in a required full smart mode re-charge.

My success in running off the power grid with the battery bank is always starting out each day/night battery run with a good 90% charge state giving me almost full battery performance. I can do this now using the generator for a three hour generator run time so adding the modest solar panel capability should reduce the generator run time considerable. Maybe use the generator for the first hour of high current re-charge and then switch to solar panels for the lower current charge for the remaining high sun day.

I suspect since my battery bank is down to the 50% charge state at 8AM each morning I will always have to use the generator to get past the initial high current battery demand when in BOOST 14.4VDC Charge mode and then the lower DC CURRENT being produced by the solar panels will get my battery bank to its required 90% charge state before I run out of HIGH SUN.

After getting more experience of using the Solar Panels I am being told by the experts on here I can really expect to be using the generator less and less each day. My goal still remains I have to start each day/night run off my batteries with the batteries being at the 90% state of charge otherwise it will get dark on me around 10PM each night. We really start using the trailer batteries pretty heavy around 7-8PM each day. When I see the batteries drop to around 12.0VDC I will shut them down to prevent doing damage to the batteries.

These are going to be my baby steps getting into the solar panels...

Roy Ken

some of this is also to prep for solar as well... i gotta upgrade a piece at a time.
new wire to converter and panel. Im going to either run 6 volts or a separate bank of two additional 12v when i boondock. I'm gonna connect them via a quick connect system...

I've got my eye on a kit from Wholesale Solar... a 500w kit "king of the road" I want to do this once... not wish I had more. clicky right hee-a!

next it is inverter shopping....

New wire will not help that WFCO.
You need a PD9260 or PD4655 converter replacement with a button to control the boost mode.

bigcitypopo wrote:
two 12v standard interstate grp24 batteries, and wfco 8955... it never seems to go into boost mode. the wire has 19 strands of copper in it... seems thin

Wire is probably #6 I'm betting. That seems to be the "standard" of the RV industry. And the WFCO is notorious for not going into boost mode. If it does work it needs two things: short thick wire and batteries have to be under 50% SOC. Most people don't bother. The WFCO is good for handling things on shore power though so no need to get rid of it. On my "old" 5er, I got a second deckmount converter and put it close to the batteries and used that for charging. The WFCO was used for floating and when I was at a full hookup campground.

two 12v standard interstate grp24 batteries, and wfco 8955... it never seems to go into boost mode. the wire has 19 strands of copper in it... seems thin

Remind us what converter you have and how many batteries.
Otherwise I would get the solar installed and see if you are even running the generator much to charge.

Here are some links to wire size calculators...
Wire Size Calculator
Wiring Size Guide
Wire Resistance and Voltage Drop Calculator