upgrading power converter
My power converter has apparently bit the dust, lights flickering for past couple of years now no charge to batteries... Anyhoo, we do a lot of dry camping, where we need to daily boost the batteries...
Forum Discussion
My OEM set up was a WFCO 8955 with about 25' of #6 wire to the batteries, with the ground path to the frame. A while back I changed out the WFCO for a PD 4655, and at the same time upgraded the wiring. I couldn't get to the existing #6 wire so I ran a #4 in parallel, and if you add up the cross sections a #6 and a #4 together equal a #2. I ordered the pendant to go with the 46755 but have not connected it yet....
Seems like we don't dry camp here in KY as much as we did on LI, but was just out this past weekend. The batteries are a pair of Interstate 6V that were new in spring of 2006, so they are getting a little tired....an evening of watching the LCD TV and paying Scrabble with the LED lights on in the TT brought me to about 60% SOC in the morning. Good thing the weather was mild, I don't think I would have made it through the night with the furnace.
Anyways, fired up the generator in the morning and voltage immediately hit 14.4 and stayed there until I shut down the genny about 2.5 hrs later with batteries at about 90%.
Could never get the WFCO in "boost mode" and could never get any fast recovery on the batteries like that. For the OP, I wouldn't worry about upgrading the charging amps on your converter, pay more attention to upgrading the wiring between the converter and the batteries.
Seems like we don't dry camp here in KY as much as we did on LI, but was just out this past weekend. The batteries are a pair of Interstate 6V that were new in spring of 2006, so they are getting a little tired....an evening of watching the LCD TV and paying Scrabble with the LED lights on in the TT brought me to about 60% SOC in the morning. Good thing the weather was mild, I don't think I would have made it through the night with the furnace.
Anyways, fired up the generator in the morning and voltage immediately hit 14.4 and stayed there until I shut down the genny about 2.5 hrs later with batteries at about 90%.
Could never get the WFCO in "boost mode" and could never get any fast recovery on the batteries like that. For the OP, I wouldn't worry about upgrading the charging amps on your converter, pay more attention to upgrading the wiring between the converter and the batteries.
