How Best To Charge My Battery

[xzyHollyxyz]

I have a single group 27 battery.
I have a Honda eu1000i generator.
My trailer came with a parallax 7155 converter.
I want to upgrade to a Progressive Dynamics PD9260CV converter.

Will making that upgrade be a more efficient way to charge my single battery? Or is the parallax 7155 good enough? Or option #3, would it be quicker/more efficient to hook the generator directly to the battery?

Early next year, i plan on doing a lot of boondocking.

Thanks for your help.

Regards,
Michelle

[mena661]

mitch5252 wrote:

Oh, another question - can those coated wires (mainly the red one toward the center) safe touch the coil thing with the copper wire wrapped around it (I'm assuming that's a large capacitor??)

I wouldn't worry about it.

[xzyHollyxyz]

The wrong size/part was totally my fault. I ordered wrong. Thankfully, I continued asking here and then wrote to the manufacturer. It was a simple return to Amazon and they are already processing my refund.

I found it funny that the FULL power center was $146 and just the converter/charger was $205. Oh well.

Here is the (almost) finished product (need to put on the cover, but it's 95 in there...I need to cool off.)



Oh, another question - can those coated wires (mainly the red one toward the center) safe touch the coil thing with the copper wire wrapped around it (I'm assuming that's a large capacitor??)

smkettner wrote:
The 4645 will operate just fine without the pendent. You can still tell what charging mode it is in (boost, normal, float) with a voltmeter. You just cannot change the mode manually and you may never need to change modes. Might leave that project for another day.

Or find out why you were sent the wrong size.

[time2roll]

The 4645 will operate just fine without the pendent. You can still tell what charging mode it is in (boost, normal, float) with a voltmeter. You just cannot change the mode manually and you may never need to change modes. Might leave that project for another day.

Or find out why you were sent the wrong size.

[xzyHollyxyz]

OP here.

Two questions - what is the black plastic bar? I didn't notice any reference to it in the instructions...

And the remote pendant - where do I plug it - I don't see a receptacle for it. If it's somewhere on the converter assembly, that thing locked in with a plastic clip on the underside and I don't know how to "unlock" it to be able to pull assembly out.

Always something, huh? 🙂

ON EDIT: I found online that I can't use the Remote Pendant without cutting wires and soldering stuff and using heat shrink tubing (2 different sizes). Would Lowe's carry that stuff?

[xzyHollyxyz]

The whole "pigtail" was just connected to the old converter with one wire. That's what I snipped this morning. Hopefully, photos I took yesterday will show me where to hook up the other wire. If not, I'll be back here!! 😞

The pigtail had a wire nut connecting it to something on the old converter - so, is that the second one?

smkettner wrote:
The pin goes into the breaker empty slot adjacent to the other black wire.

Looks like you cut both leads from that pin 😞 That is OK, now you need two wire nuts. One to connect to the new converter. And the other goes back onto the other existing circuit.

That 10-30 & 40-50 lable on the breaker side is just a diagram to show how far back to strip the insulation. Yours is a 15a breaker so you follow the first if you were inserting a copper wire. But since you are inserting a pin it does not even apply.

[time2roll]

The pin goes into the breaker empty slot adjacent to the other black wire.

Looks like you cut both leads from that pin 😞 That is OK, now you need two wire nuts. One to connect to the new converter. And the other goes back onto the other existing circuit.

That 10-30 & 40-50 lable on the breaker side is just a diagram to show how far back to strip the insulation. Yours is a 15a breaker so you follow the first if you were inserting a copper wire. But since you are inserting a pin it does not even apply.

[xzyHollyxyz]

OP here (again).

Let me start this post by saying I appreciate your advice. I've recently learned that Widowhood Is The Mother of Invention! If I paid someone to do this, I would learn nothing. This way, I'm learning a lot for if I'm ever in a position to have to examine this myself (like boondocking in Mexico...)

Anyway, here are some pics of where I pulled that "pigtail".

The first pic is the pigtail I cut off the old converter (per your instruction here).

The second pic shows two "labels" on the breaker - 10-30A and ??-50A.
Do those correspond to the third picture, which shows two holes?

I did not know there were two holes there when I took out the pigtail and I don't know where i need to put it back.







I have my wire nut all ready to go when I figure this hole problem out!! 🙂

Gosh, I'll be lucky if I don't fry myself at some point during this process! Or burn the darn trailer down.

Regards,
Michelle
Sigh.

[BFL13]

"Now I need to find out what an AC BRANCH BREAKER is. There are 3 breakers in there, each with two little switches. There was a black wire coming out of the bottom of the center breaker and it was joined to two other wires with a short piece and one of those yellow wire connectors"

The branch circuit breaker fits onto a "buss bar" at the top where it gets its 120v power from the main breaker end of the buss. Each "branch" has its own "circuit" like "receptacles", "galley receptacle", "converter", "air conditioner", etc.

Sometimes there are more circuits than breakers, so they have to share. With a 7155 (or 7355) they often have the converter share with the receptacles. This means two black wires going into the bottom of the same circuit breaker.

Where you see two other black wires joined with the one to the same circuit breaker, now three circuits are sharing the same breaker.

The instruction to only use one with one is all very nice, but you can just go with how your rig was built in the first place. Except---

If you want to be able to run the receptacles off an inverter AND turn off the converter, as you must if the shore power cord is plugged into the inverter, then you can choose a different circuit breaker for the converter so you can shut that off and still have the receptacles live.

If you haven't, then you should verify the circuits named for each breaker on the label. Not unusual for them to be mislabelled. Make ink correction. 😞 "Know your rig"

[time2roll]

Cut the existing black (hot) to the old converter leaving plenty of wire attached to the breaker. Connect this pigtail to the new converter with a twist-on wire nut.

Yes ground(green) goes to the bus with all the copper and the neutral(white) goes to the bus with all the white wires.

4645 will serve you very well.

[xzyHollyxyz]

OP HERE - I finally got the right part all straightened out. I needed the Progressive Dynamics PD4645V. I'm trying to install it today.

The old converter (Parallax 7155) did not have a green wire going to the AC side. This new one does. I am supposed to connect the green wire to the Ground Bar. I THINK the ground bar is the stainless steel bar at the top, with 6 holes and 6 copper wires coming out of it...

I have since learned that I can double up on one of the copper wires by adding the new green wire.



Now I need to find out what an AC BRANCH BREAKER is. There are 3 breakers in there, each with two little switches. There was a black wire coming out of the bottom of the center breaker and it was joined to two other wires with a short piece and one of those yellow wire connectors.



I'm a little confused by the instructions: Connect hot (black) wire to the existing AC branch breaker. If the utility pigtail was used on the original installation, two short lengths of 14AWG wire and a wire nut may be used to provide the utility pigtail. DO NOT install (2) wires into the breaker.

Okay, I lied - I'm not a little confused, I'm a lot confused! 🙂

[MEXICOWANDERER]

One group 27 cyclable battery discharged to 1.190

How many hours does it take a PD 9245C to raise all cells to 1.270 (which is not a full charge)?

This would allow a fair sense of perspective when forced to listen to a generator consuming three dollar and eighty cents a gallon gasoline.

[BFL13]

It is true the higher charging rate will reach Vabs sooner at a lower SOC. But when amps then taper, for a while they are still higher than the full amps of the lower charging rate, so it is faster overall to use the higher amp charger.

Once the higher amp charger's amps taper down to the lower charger's rate they are at the same SOC at that voltage and have the same times from there on.

However, there is a limit to this where you can start off with too high a charging rate (over 30% approx.) and get no constant amp stage at all, but an immediate spike in battery voltage and tapering amps from the start. This limit varies with battery type/brand

[Pauljdav]

RJsfishin wrote:
I'll talk in plain English,.......
Get a PD 9245, and you will love it. It would be plenty big for even 2 27s, and it won't overload your Honda, and you will have manual control over the charging stages, should the need ever arise.

X2. Unless you are ever planning on upgrading you battery bank to 2 or more batteries you will actually get a faster charge with a 45 amp as it will charge further into the 90% range before the battery voltage rises and the charge process slows dramatically.

[time2roll]

With a Honda 1000 I would not leave both connected.