Replacing my battery guage

[dougster]

My Starcraft 2007 came with a battery gauge. It never seemed very accurate, but now it is dead. I put my portable voltage meter on the back and the voltage read fine.
Shall I try to replace it with an identical meter (there are no dealers near me), or replace it with something more useful?

[MEXICOWANDERER]

[Almot]

You do need some means of monitoring the battery charge. Install 12 VDC Drok digital display from Amazon, $12 or so. Make sure it's DC, because they make AC models as well. Don't fall for $3 displays, they are all cr-ap. Voltage is not the best way to estimate SOC, but much better than your defunct OEM Christmas lights.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Or you could do it the South Of The Border way...

Connect two wires, one to each post. Bare an inch on the ends...

Strike the two together.

If a big blue arc results the wires glow and your skin blisters...

"You're good to go"

[beemerphile1]

I mounted a freebie Harbor Freight VOM beside the original panel and hard wired it behind the panel. It cost nothing and now I can see the actual voltage rather than worthless idiot lights.

[Shadow_Catcher]

There is only one way to know with some assurance what the SOC state of charge of you battery(s) are and that is with a battery monitor, and currently it is the Bogart Trimetric or the Vectron. I chose the latter because of ease of set up and use.

[Joe_Way]

I got a meter like THIS from ebay a couple of years ago.

I cut a hole in my gauge panel and wired the meter through a miniature momentary-contact pushbutton switch. Press the button, see the voltage.

These are super cheap but read very close to my Fluke multimeter.

[RoyB]

IMO this meter has no useful function for we operators to use it... It is simply a GO-NO GO display...

I would remove it and replace with something more useful. Maybe a TRIMETRIC RV-2025RV or something along that line. Even a simple DIGITAL DC VOLTAGE meter would be better to have... I like the idea of the TRIMETRIC RV-2025RV unit having a settable DC VOLTAGE alarm setting. This will alert you when the batteries being monitored when camping OFF GRID are failing off on DC VOLTAGE...

My 2008 Starcraft OFF-ROAD POPUP trailer has one of those too... I think it still works haha...


That three meter panel shown here replaces the 12VDC monitor for me...
An Alarm like the TRIMETRIC RV2025RV unit provides would be most helpful for me here haha...


Just saying
Roy Ken