WF-8955 where is the other fast charge?

[horton333]

So its raining and I am trying to learn the new trailer and nothing I try seems to be able to pry anything more than 13.6 voltages out of this supposed 3 stage charger. Where's the14.4?! Even with drying as low as iamwilling to on the battery Max is 13.6. Seeing other posts it seems like I am not the only one. Is there any solution to this ( don't need to know about competitors products, thanks)

[wa8yxm]

WFCO is noted for a short time between failure and the MOST COMMON failure is failure to go into BOOST (Bulk, FAST) charge mode (14.x) In short what you see is the most common failure mode.

The soultion is a Progressive Dynamics 4600 series from Best Converters. It "Drops in" where the electronics are now on that WE Fail Close to Onset box and with the dongle you have full control.

[horton333]

Whoops, so the situation returns to foggy this morning. There is more going on then just getting the voltage under a 13.2 as is indicated by the modification instructions. I had the voltage at the connection of the converter to the bus bar under 13.2 for almost 5 minutes. It then continued ramping up fairly fast to about 13.5, maybe 20 more minutes, and then ramped up slowly to 13.59 after 2 hours. I got bored. My unit is never going to go into 14.4 volts in any realistic instalation. Perhaps there is a need for more current at the same time as low voltage or whatever but as there enough people seeing it going to 14.4 for only short periods this indicates to me that getting boost is more complex than is worth figuring out. I'll stay with carrying a second battery and external charger, for now amyway. There does appear to be room for one of my group 31 agms beside the converter, that would be useful given the existing wiring us losing a fair fraction of the voltage.

[horton333]

Those older threads filled in my remaining blanks, Thanks to all!! and wish I had my soldering iron here to truly close this while the weather keeps me inside.
I was already within measurement error (or calibration of my unit) of 13.2V in my earlier experiments so I should be able to get that experiment done tomorrow without too much effort with a little more abusive discharge on the battery. If that kicks up my unit to 14.4 then I now know where to tweak it so I can force it with a switch.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

rjxj wrote:
I had a new wfco and 4 batteries and 2 cable. I returned it to best and got a pd4650? Pretty sure thats the model. If I couldn't have returned I would have thrown it in the lake. But then Im not interested in world friendship, just no fiddling around battery charging.

You wouldn't have!

What a meanie!

Would have slowed all the fish down to a crawl...

[BFL13]

road-runner wrote:

"The WFCO Fast Charge (Bulk) Mode is provided for the rare times a battery needs extra power for charging."

Damage control...

I posted this a long time ago, but it is still true. A friend has a MH with a WFCO mounted reasonably close to the batts and it does 14.4 like you would expect. No magic tricks.

Smk also reported his did it right with a proper set-up. IMO it seems the real problem is not the WFCO so much as the usual set-up.

[road-runner]

"The WFCO Fast Charge (Bulk) Mode is provided for the rare times a battery needs extra power for charging."

Damage control...

[red31]

"The WFCO Fast Charge (Bulk) Mode is provided for the rare times a battery needs extra power for charging."

http://wfcoelectronics.com/wfcos-three-stage-converter-handles-every-charging-need-for-your-rv/

[azrving]

I had a new wfco and 4 batteries and 2 cable. I returned it to best and got a pd4650? Pretty sure thats the model. If I couldn't have returned I would have thrown it in the lake. But then Im not interested in world friendship, just no fiddling around battery charging.

[time2roll]

Here is my test from six years ago as I finished my struggles with 8955 WFCO:

> 55 amp WFCO Charging Test

[eb145]

Here is an old post with lots more data for you.

WFCO Force Boost thread

Ed

[MEXICOWANDERER]

I had my Wifco @ 13.62 volts at the conveter CIRCUIT BOARD for WEEKS AT A TIME delivering less than 1.0 amp and it will/not cannot drop into 13.2 volts float mode. The converter design is flawed from the word go and even if you do as I did and drop 100 amp hours battery to 12.1 volts connect a 2 farad capacitor to force the unit to 14.4 volts, what are you going to do about the unobtainable 13.2 volt float that never appears? I shot the system with 15.6 volts from a power supply for a few seconds but the WhifCo happily chewed gum and stumbled along at 13.6 volts. Never twitched.

This is a Power Pedestal Princess converter perfect for 100% RV park use whete it doesn't matter if the battery is destroyed or not. I like it as a fixed 13.6 volt power supply. But modifying the thing to be a real charger starts off by placing it behind a rear dual and go bach and forth a half dozen times. It just is not worth it. But again I love it as a bench power supply. Naked as a jaybird with a second fan blasting at it, it knows it can't play "dressup" and pretend it's a real battery charger. I can see a ratio of thirty to one the nber of PPP'S versus boondocking RVs sold today. 90% of RVs glued to an RV park have corpses in plastic cases that used to be real batteries.

Such is life.

[pianotuna]

Or he could add solar and leave the generator as a door stop at home.

[time2roll]

You could cut that 3 to 4 down to 1 or less. Your call.

[dclark1946]

RJsfishin wrote:
The fact probably is, if a wifco was ever to go into 14v charging amps, it wouldn't do it for long. If they smoke loafing in 13v mode, what do you suppose they would do at 14v.
What the astonishing part is, they still make them, and dealers still sell them, and the dealers I talked to, play ignorant to the fact that they are junk.
What they need is a class action law suit, so people like my brother in law can recoop his $400 back from the shysters out there still selling this junk.

They still sell them because they are cheap and not everyone has to have 14V during initial charge. We are on our 8th season with our trailer with it's original WF converter. I run the generator every morning for about 3-4 hours and that works for us for two weeks of dry camping. Would I like to charge faster? Probably, but not enough to get rid of a working converter.

Dick