rjxj wrote:
Per Lands comments about resistance a while back: What size cable is your converter running through?
How many feet to the batteries? Mine was about 30 plus as it crossed to the other side and back.
Did you check voltage at the converter positve vs pos terminal of batt for voltage drop?
I also did what Land said, checked everything with temp gun and found that an anl stereo, gold, pretty boy fuse got much hotter than an industrial type anl. I dont remember the V drop.
I also upped my catastrophe fuse as it was getting hot. I was too far under sized.
Also had a warm spot at my system ground.
I'm still interested in your high water use. Was it all the top charging when maybe the sg was ok? I may be wandering off but just wondering and learning.
And Mr Mex, us beginners may be wandering some but you haven't seen any spitballs, mad magazines or playboy during class. :)
i have 48" (inches) pos and 24" neg of 4ga cable from pm to batts, 16" of 4ga between each batt for series/parallel, 30" neg and 12" pos of 2ga from batts to inverter, 30" of 6ga for pm to chasis gnd, 18" of 6ga for inverter to chasis gnd, and until i can make up my own heavier cable, 16" of 6ga from batt to shunt. i have a 100a fuse between batt pos and inverter.
i have not yet been able to check temps, but all my voltage readings are dead on, throughout; with the only discrepancy being between the pm's connecting screws and the battery terminals. but the cables from the charger to the batts are 4ga; 4' to the pos., 2' to the neg. so i can't see it being line loss? ... i think maybe it has to do with the screw type connectors on the pm. there was a 0.03 drop in boost mode 14.72 vs. 14.69, and a 0.01 drop in abs mode 13.68 vs. 13.67. the best i can do is get the multimeter probes on the screws themselves.
i checked voltages across the entire 12v (4-6v) bank, across each two 6v pair in series, each 6v individually, across the shunt at various points, across batts to inverter, and so on. everything was the same to the second decimal point.
after the batts sat for over 9 hours yesterday, with the 0.9a fridge on, my SG readings were in the 1280-1290 range, and the one rogue cell that was previously at about 12.65 was right up there as well... it appears that near 15v charge with the nautilis 15amper stirred things up a little.
i too am concerned about the water loss... maybe it's just the type of caps they used? or, yes, perhaps too much top charging? i don't know. hopefully by getting the trimetric dialed in properly will answer that question.
i'm thinking i may have too much battery for my needs, but like i've said, i built the system based on the popular notion that bigger is better, and that a low slow discharge is best. i am going to seriously consider either eliminating one 6v pair, or splitting them into two 215a/h banks. lots to consider.
