jrnymn7 wrote:
BFL13 wrote:
jrnymn7 wrote:
BFL13 wrote:
You can modify yours by drilling out the four rivets of the cover, remove that, put your voltmeter into the DC output terminals, and tweak the little blue pot's screw with a glasses frame sized screwdriver, and set the voltage to say, 14.6.
Not too clear if you crank it back to 13.6 it will still work as a 4 stager. Might not. I don't care with mine. Also forget the warranty :)
to what voltage can the pm be raised? and can one keep changing the voltage up or down to compensate for temp and equalizing vs. regular charging?
It has a range from maybe 13-low15s? Anyway it is sort of fragile and not meant to be twiddled much. I set mine at 14.8 and nailed the lid back on. No more changes with that tiny little blue pot. :)
If you want the one with the variable voltage that is meant to be twiddled (has external knob) check out that Boondocker Deluxe version Randy is coming out with soon on bestconverters.com
yeah that's what i figured.
i just bought this last year (from randy) and installed it last week, so i'm not in a hurry to buy yet another charger. it seems even after spending many hours reading up on chargers and charging, i'm still making all the wrong choices. but hey, how can the average joe compete against all the hype and mis-information.
i mean, even pm's boondocker series is mis-marketed (if that's even a word?) . apparently the pm4b belongs in a garage or trailer park, not in the boonies! and yes, randy comes highly recommended, but didn't he have a hand in engineering this thing? moreover, who's idea was it to market it as a charger for true boondockers???
i'm someone who likes to do their homework, and i don't mind paying for quality, but it seems i've been mislead by the industry. it appears the onus is put on the consumer to sift through all the bs and figure out what their needs really are, and what product, if any, can fill those needs. but this is becoming a rather expensive learning curve!
(sorry for the rant)
Tell me about it. That's why I mentioned that I had gone through the same thing. I had a TT last year with a converter that had a jumper tap that would let it charge at 14.4 but it still wasn't enough to let me run our generator and charge 2 group 27 deep/marine batteries. It sucked bad as we were limiting our furnace and tv use. It was torture and now that I changed rigs I was bound and determined to not have it happen again.
So I started out with the original converter that would barely put out. Not surprising so I ended up with a wfco from Bestconv. It wouldn't go to 14.4 and sat charging for 3 or 4 days when I threw a junk $25.00 schmacher 6 amp on it. That actually helped the most.
At that point with the help of these guys I returned it to Best and got the PD4655 and was told it would do the job. It was far better if you kept pushing the boost button but I started checking things and found that the 6 gauge house wiring ran from the converter, across the rig, down the other side, and back over to the batteries for a total of 30 feet or more.
I shortened the run to 15 feet and used 4 gauge. That knocked the voltage drop from .9 to .2
It was much better but I knew there was no way it would carry us through the winter. in the thread I had posted and several of these guys had responded to, one of them made the comment that ALL converters are crappy. It caught my eye but didn't dwell on it. The next morning when I woke up it dawned on me, that guy said ALL converters are crappy.
I had worked on electric fork trucks and JLG, genie boom and cushman cart type equipment my whole career and remember using Lester and Quick Charge brand industrial chargers. i went on line and looked up Quick charge. 12 volts/50 amps/ $400.00 ouch. To heck with it, I'm solving this, ordered it. Well, several charges later it's doing good. in the comparison I posted yesterday it took 2 6 volts from 12.29 to full charge in 5.5 hours.
It's top voltage was 15.60 As Mex said maybe a little rich for normal charge and maybe a tad low for a good equalize. It doesn't scare me as I have a similar set up on my electric pontoon boat. it's a 48 volt motor with a Lester charger and 4 in series group 27 sams deep/marine batteries. It will take that bank to 62 volts or 15.50 per battery. It's not bad on water and those batteries are 8 years old.
So, I'm not saying buy a Quick charge or a Lester. To me the PD is a good converter but it's not a battery charger. It's engineered to be an rv converter and the normal person would go on vacation and come home and plug back in. Just as other systems in an rv are not designed to be off grid, boondocking rigs that we want.
So we need our own power generation systems just like the energy companies that bring power to my light switch. So how do we do that? Well I needed to be able to run ac so I went with a Honda 3000 and now a Quick Charge 50 amp. I'm also getting a Mega Watt 40 amp. I have separated the batteries into 2 banks and will fully utilize the honda and as amps drop put it in eco mode.
I dont know how to use the mega but I'll figure it out and in the end I think I will be able to do everything I want and then shove the batteries back full as fast as possible. When I have it figured out completely and I know exactly how my system feels and performs I will probably move on to solar to cut the noise and fuel use.
I way I see it is if I'm going to have 4 batteries and genny etc, the thing is going to work. I'm going to have a system that performs.
If the Mega doesn't do it or I cant figure it out there will be 36 more pounds of Quick Charge pumping away next to the other one. The PD will rest quietly behind the little metal door.
I think I can do this with about an hour a day of run time and a 6 hour charge every 2 or 3 weeks. I wont know the run times until we actually do what we are going to do in whatever temps we end up in.
Sorry to go on so long and I know you are bombarded and you just shelled out a couple hundred bucks but converters are converters and chargers are chargers.
