Best house battery?

pianotuna wrote:

pnichols wrote:


I think that my coach battery interconnect solenoid connects the chassis battery in direct parallel with the coach batteries, so there's nothing to protect the alternator (?) from getting really hit with high initial inrush charging current if I were to drop in Battle Born Li batteries, from what I read about them

I think your inrush argument doesn't hold water for several reasons.

1. my class c had an oem 60 fuse--so if inrush exceeded that, it would blow.

2. my class C had #8 wire for the oem charging path. That limits it to about 50 amps.

I did replace the OEM fuse with a 50 amp automatic circuit breaker. I also added a 2nd charging path with #8 wire, switchable solenoid, and automatic circuit breaker.

Anecdotally, my alternator is still OEM and I do push it hard--even so far as running the 1400 watt water heater via the inverter. I use a 1/3 duty cycle--20 minutes of heating and 40 minutes off. That lets me arrive at the boondocking site with hot water and lots of battery power.

There is an excellent article on inrush at the smartgauge site.

When I said "direct parallel" that wasn't including any OEM fuses that might be in place. For what it's worth, my 2005 Itasca (also on a model year 2005 E450 chassis) has at times shown over 70 amps going into my coach batteries, for a bit, when I first start idling the V10 to charge up ~50% discharged coach batteries.

So if my chassis has OEM fuses somewhere after the 130 amp Ford alternator, then they're larger than 50 amp. Winnebago may have gotten involved in all this someway when they built the coach, but so far I can't find out how - with cursory poking around the chassis and from looking at the Winnie electrical schematics for the coach. :h