So its raining and I am trying to learn the new trailer and nothing I try seems to be able to pry anything more than 13.6 voltages out of this supposed 3 stage charger. Where's the14.4?! Even with drying as low as iamwilling to on the battery Max is 13.6. Seeing other posts it seems like I am not the only one. Is there any solution to this ( don't need to know about competitors products, thanks)

You can attempt to remedy the situation by increasing the cable size from the wfco to the battery bank. Try #2. You can move the converter closer to the battery bank using thicker wire. Neither of these suggestions work all the time, or even most of the time.You MIGHT be able to pop the box and twiddle some internal knobs, but don't do so unless you are fairly expert. You may let out the magic blue smoke. In which case you may want to change brands.

You need sufficient load or battery draw to have voltage AT THE CONVERTER sag below 13.2 volts.Not an easy task actually.Far better to get a PD9260 or 55a IOTA with IQ controller.

smkettner wrote:You need sufficient load or battery draw to have voltage AT THE CONVERTER sag below 13.2 volts.Not an easy task actually.Far better to get a PD9260 or 55a IOTA with IQ controller.To elaborate on that 13.2 business:when you first apply a charger to a battery, there is an initial voltage spike from 12.x to 13.x. If the charging rate is high (amps vs AH size of battery bank) the spike will go above 13.2, can even hit 14 or whatever. With a given charging rate, the next variable is the battery's state of charge. If it is higher in 12.x voltage, it will be easier to spike it above 13.2, so the idea is to have the charging rate just right and the SOC low enough that the initial spike is under 13.2, after which the battery voltage slowly climbs under the recharge in the usual way.It happens that with the WFCO (and early model years PowerMaxs before they fixed that in 2011/12 ISTR) you need to get battery to just under 50% SOC and not hit it with too many amps so the spike is under 13.2 and it will go to 14.4v.The reason smk is always saying you should try a 35amp charger instead of a 55amp is to get that charging rate down so that at 50% SOC it will go into 14.4 and not spike over 13.2 like it does with a 55 amper. However that still leaves you with a 35 amp charge instead of a 55. If you want a 55 rate and you can't get more than 13.6, you do need a different charger (of which there are several choices)OTOH, if you want to keep the 55amp WFCO, you could try it on four batteries instead of just two. That halves the charging rate, so you might get your 14.4. Just takes a long generator run time to do a 50-90 on four batts starting at only 55amps! :( (I like to use 140amps to recharge my four 6s. I don't have a WFCO! I have a 100amp PowerMax plus a 40 amp VEC1093DBD and run both together from my Honda 3000)

To elaborate a bit more. I took the voltage, measured at the converter's connection to the bus bar, to below 12 volts, twice by draining the battery. Once I tried with only parisitic load plus battery and the other I kept about 20 ampres load from the lights plus battery when I switched a.c. back on. In both cases it would start at like 13.2 and then in a couple of minutes go to about 13.6 and sit there in both cases till I got bored. I had also tried some much less severe cases. Similar results except the starting voltage would be like 13.4 or 13.5, and then stop at around 13.6. This puppy does not seem to care what the battery is doing from what I can see.I am not willing to mess with the configuration, I already have what works well from the old trailerfor fast charging, but I connect directly to the battery and that gets noring. Quickly.If someone has a schematic that may help.

Don't forget that 13.2 is 'as seen' at the converter, so if there is voltage drop on long thin wire from battery to converter, the battery may be under 13.2, but the converter will see higher than that.So part of the deal is to have low resistance between battery and WFCO as well as the other business wrt charging rate and SOC.

WF-8955 where is the other fast charge? | Good Sam Community

pianotuna
Nomad III
Sep 13, 2015
Or he could add solar and leave the generator as a door stop at home.
MEXICOWANDERER
Explorer
Sep 13, 2015
I had my Wifco @ 13.62 volts at the conveter CIRCUIT BOARD for WEEKS AT A TIME delivering less than 1.0 amp and it will/not cannot drop into 13.2 volts float mode. The converter design is flawed from the word go and even if you do as I did and drop 100 amp hours battery to 12.1 volts connect a 2 farad capacitor to force the unit to 14.4 volts, what are you going to do about the unobtainable 13.2 volt float that never appears? I shot the system with 15.6 volts from a power supply for a few seconds but the WhifCo happily chewed gum and stumbled along at 13.6 volts. Never twitched.

This is a Power Pedestal Princess converter perfect for 100% RV park use whete it doesn't matter if the battery is destroyed or not. I like it as a fixed 13.6 volt power supply. But modifying the thing to be a real charger starts off by placing it behind a rear dual and go bach and forth a half dozen times. It just is not worth it. But again I love it as a bench power supply. Naked as a jaybird with a second fan blasting at it, it knows it can't play "dressup" and pretend it's a real battery charger. I can see a ratio of thirty to one the nber of PPP'S versus boondocking RVs sold today. 90% of RVs glued to an RV park have corpses in plastic cases that used to be real batteries.

Such is life.
eb145
Explorer II
Sep 13, 2015
Here is an old post with lots more data for you.

WFCO Force Boost thread

Ed
time2roll
Nomad
Sep 13, 2015
Here is my test from six years ago as I finished my struggles with 8955 WFCO:

> 55 amp WFCO Charging Test
azrving
Explorer
Sep 13, 2015
I had a new wfco and 4 batteries and 2 cable. I returned it to best and got a pd4650? Pretty sure thats the model. If I couldn't have returned I would have thrown it in the lake. But then Im not interested in world friendship, just no fiddling around battery charging.
red31
Explorer
Sep 13, 2015
"The WFCO Fast Charge (Bulk) Mode is provided for the rare times a battery needs extra power for charging."

http://wfcoelectronics.com/wfcos-three-stage-converter-handles-every-charging-need-for-your-rv/
road-runner
Explorer III
Sep 13, 2015
"The WFCO Fast Charge (Bulk) Mode is provided for the rare times a battery needs extra power for charging."

Damage control...
BFL13
Explorer II
Sep 14, 2015
road-runner wrote:
"The WFCO Fast Charge (Bulk) Mode is provided for the rare times a battery needs extra power for charging."

Damage control...

I posted this a long time ago, but it is still true. A friend has a MH with a WFCO mounted reasonably close to the batts and it does 14.4 like you would expect. No magic tricks.

Smk also reported his did it right with a proper set-up. IMO it seems the real problem is not the WFCO so much as the usual set-up.
MEXICOWANDERER
Explorer
Sep 14, 2015
rjxj wrote:
I had a new wfco and 4 batteries and 2 cable. I returned it to best and got a pd4650? Pretty sure thats the model. If I couldn't have returned I would have thrown it in the lake. But then Im not interested in world friendship, just no fiddling around battery charging.

You wouldn't have!

What a meanie!

Would have slowed all the fish down to a crawl...
horton333
Explorer
Sep 14, 2015
Those older threads filled in my remaining blanks, Thanks to all!! and wish I had my soldering iron here to truly close this while the weather keeps me inside.
I was already within measurement error (or calibration of my unit) of 13.2V in my earlier experiments so I should be able to get that experiment done tomorrow without too much effort with a little more abusive discharge on the battery. If that kicks up my unit to 14.4 then I now know where to tweak it so I can force it with a switch.