2002 Winnebago Class C with 2, 6 volt batteries

[tunabob]

How do I keep the house batteries charged while MH is in storage? Our Bounder had a small solar panel that trickle charges the batteries while in storage without and 110 power hooked up. Thanks, learning a new rig, any help apricated.

[Gdetrailer]

Dusty R wrote:
Why not put a battery disconnect on the battery?
Is there any ill effect to a modern automotive engine with the battery being disconnected for 3 months?

Won't hurt the engine but will not help either.

Radio presets are not the only thing that will be lost.

Modern engine/drive train systems require constant 12V power to retain all learned settings.

In a nutshell the engine ECU will "learn" and retain all operating parameters as you drive. Those parameters are then used to make precise adjustments to your engine spark and fuel system along with learning and adjusting your transmission control for upshift and downshift.

Disconnect the battery for more than a couple of minutes and all that learned info is lost.

While this doesn't hurt anything it doesn't help in the fact that the computer will need to go through multiple complete "cycles" (cold to fully hot back to cold) which will affect emissions, fuel economy and sometimes drivability until the computer has optimized adjustments.

Read your vehicles owners manual for how to complete the ECU learning cycles.

For yrs I have jumpered in an additional battery power source to the vehicle when replacing starting battery in my vehicles in order to not lose the ECU settings.

Depending on what you have available, you can add a 50W solar panel with a solar controller to keep your starting battery charged if no shore power is available.

If you have shore power available you could just buy a 120V multistage charger for the starting battery. Not expensive and you can leave it wired up so all you have to do is plug in the MH and the rest is taken care of without needing to do anything else.

I have one like this..

on my whole house backup gen battery. It is a 5A fully automatic three stage charger and cost about $30

FOUND HERE

5A isn't going to boil the battery to death and with multistage charging it will drop to maintenance charging voltage of about 13.2V.

[DrewE]

Disconnecting the battery may also result in the engine computer forgetting settings it's learned over time, so it would have to relearn them. That's not really a problem (it won't harm anything) but it might result in not quite so good performance for a little bit. If you have a state motor vehicle or emissions inspection, it probably won't pass immediately after being reconnected because some of the OBD2 checks will probably show "not ready" and the state doesn't like that. Driving around a little, maybe an hour or so, will usually be enough to eliminate the not ready states.

In short: there's no real problem in disconnecting the battery, but possibly a few quite minor annoyances.

[2oldman]

Dusty R wrote:
Is there any ill effect to a modern automotive engine with the battery being disconnected for 3 months?

Perhaps losing your radio presets. Lol

[Dusty_R]

Why not put a battery disconnect on the battery?
Is there any ill effect to a modern automotive engine with the battery being disconnected for 3 months?

[2oldman]

tunabob wrote:
can you describe a small system that will keep my 2 6 volt house batteries and 12 volt start batteries charged 12V.

Charged batteries will stay ok for a long time with one of the cables disconnected.

[DrewE]

Disclaimer: I'm far from an expert on solar installations; others here have much more experience and knowledge.

The two small panels you describe are a very reasonable option, so far as I can tell, and certainly affordable. It would be well to check on the battery state every now and again to make sure they're sufficient (and that the battery electrolyte levels are staying reasonable for flooded batteries).

If it were me, I'd probably get a little more sophisticated setup with (say) a 100W panel and associated charge controller for the house battery, and put in a Trik-L-Start unit to keep the chassis battery up. Depending on your budget and your typical camping situation (i.e. camping with or without hookups, in the trees or in the open, etc.) it may be wise to get at least a larger capacity charge controller than needed so you could add additional panels fairly easily at a later time, or even go with a higher capacity system to begin with.

I've considered getting a solar setup for my motorhome at times, but frankly there are not many times where it would be especially helpful for the sorts of camping I've been doing. I'm fairly often among trees, and usually not spending more than a few days at any given place such that the house battery has enough capacity for my usage without needing to use the generator (and gets recharged when driving).

[tunabob]

Drew, can you describe a small system that will keep my 2 6 volt house batteries and 12 volt start batteries charged? Thanks. It may mean a cig lighter plug and small solar panel for the start and another small panel with clips for the 2 sixes that are actually a 12V.

[Lwiddis]

Consider a 30 watt solar panel and $25 weatherproof controller from WindyNation.

[DrewE]

As enblethen mentions, the fact that they're 6V batteries matters not a bit here; a pair of 6V batteries in series is a 12V battery, albeit one physically separated into two sections.

I do it by plugging in my motorhome and letting the (multistage) converter do its job. If that's not an option and the storage is not indoors in the dark, a modest solar setup is a great option. For short periods of time or storage in cold (sub-freezing) conditions, disconnecting fully charged batteries is reasonable. Failing those, the best choice is to remove the batteries to some place where you can keep them charged...though that's hardly convenient.

[enblethen]

The six volters are wired in series. You can use the same method as in your old rig.