We payed the price for convenience
Let's start with last year. End of the season, last trip. As we are hooking up to head home the battery dies and we have to use jumper cables to raise the fifth-wheel to hook up the truck. Battery was...
Forum Discussion
mpierce wrote:schlep1967 wrote:mpierce wrote:
Ouch. You got a crappy WFCO? Ones everyone on here, me included, say to get rid of because they do a terrible job of charging the battery?
Lol did you see the part where I said I didn't have cell service. Had I been able to do research I would have done several things differently. The original got us through 4 years of hard use and we used one battery in that time. Next time I'll be better prepared.
My suggestion? Why wait until this WFCO dies? It will NEVER charge your battery adequately, unless plugged in for DAYS!
Spend the money, get the PD with pendant, NOW. Put your NEW WFCO up for sale on ebay. You will get a portion of your money back. You WILL be amazed how much better the PD charges your battery.
I swapped a NEW WFCO out of a new toy hauler, and put in a PD9280, with pendant. Soooooo much faster, and fills the battery to full MUCH sooner.
I'm not sure how much faster you can charge a battery. Here is the 3 stage output from the WFCO
Output Ranges:- Nominal (Absorption Mode) 13.6 Vdc (includes charging and load)
- Boost (Bulk Mode) 14.4 Vdc
- Trickle (Float Mode) 13.2 Vdc (after 48 hrs.)
You say it will take days to charge the battery. Others on here say it charges them too fast and causes them to boil. I'm not one that gets on the internet and believes everything he reads and then turns around and tries to tell everyone else it is true. And I hope others on here would agree that does none of us any good.
And I'm also not sure of how I could save any money by doing as you say. I'm already out $325. I could maybe resell it for $100 if I am lucky. And then spend another $270+ to replace it. So now I'm out $500. And this new fancy converter still won't make me breakfast in the morning.
I may not have bought the best out there. But I bought what I knew would replace what was in there at the time. The dealer didn't offer me any other/better options. I spent the money and I hope it will outlast the first one that was in there. If it doesn't I'll look at replacing it with something else at that time. To my mind getting 4 years of use out of that $325 beats getting a weekend of use out of it and selling it at a $225 loss + the cost of the replacement.
Heck for all I know I will replace the current trailer with another one before I need another converter.
