Itasca Spirit Batteries losing charge
My 2000 Winnie Itasca Spirit's house batteries won't hold a charge longer than a few days. The batteries are only 2-3 years old. They will accept a charge OK overnight and when I run the engine for a ...
Forum Discussion
If you've got two, try each separately. Usually when one of my two batteries fails (cell short, reduced capacity from being sulphated or partially drying out) the bad one will quickly drag down the good one, even with minimal load.
If I can find out which of the two batteries is the better, I can make do with that one alone until I get a chance to replace them both as a matched set.
That they charge to full voltage, even to "full" by measurement of specific gravity, does not mean that they are in good condition. A battery, if not shorted, with capacity reduced to as little as a tenth of what it was new will still charge to the full charge voltage. It will get there very quickly if there is not much effective plate area to charge. Condition, current effective capacity, has to be measured by charge/discharge testing.
If I can find out which of the two batteries is the better, I can make do with that one alone until I get a chance to replace them both as a matched set.
That they charge to full voltage, even to "full" by measurement of specific gravity, does not mean that they are in good condition. A battery, if not shorted, with capacity reduced to as little as a tenth of what it was new will still charge to the full charge voltage. It will get there very quickly if there is not much effective plate area to charge. Condition, current effective capacity, has to be measured by charge/discharge testing.
