[VAC] Re: Battery Chargers

[Jim Dunmyer <jdunmyer@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

John,
  What you want to do will work. We had a failure of the UniVolt in our 
'68 A/S while on a trip, so we went to Wal-Mart and bought a $40.00 
battery charger to get us by.

A year or 2 later, the converter in our Avion failed (a refurbed 
StatPower 20-amp Tru-Charge unit), again while on a trip. Of course, our 
$40.00 battery charger was at home, and we needed power Right Now 
because of its being Winter and needing to run the furnace. Sooo... it 
was off to Wal-Mart again for another $40.00 10-amp charger. We used it 
for nearly a week, until we got to a Camping World to buy an 
Inteli-Power w/Charge Wizard. It took me several more days to get a 
Round Tuit and install the I-P + C.W., with the battery charger doing a 
fine job in the meantime.

Interesting observation: I connected the charger directly to the 
batteries, which are under the front couch in that Avion, bypassing the 
eMeter. That meant that the eMeter couldn't track Amp Hours INTO the 
battery, only OUT. Over a period of about 3 days, the eMeter tracked 
usage and started showing "Battery Low". However, selecting the Battery 
Voltage function showed that the battery was in fact fully charged. We 
could easily have gone "forever" with just the 10-amp charger, or so it 
seems.

Long trips will now see us carrying the Wal-Mart charger as a backup. In 
fact, I'm using it right now in our "new" Avion, as the converter 
doesn't seem to be charging the battery at all and I've not yet gotten 
around to replacing it with another I-P + C.W.

You might be disappointed in the charge rate from your vehicle to the 
trailer; the eMeter shows that I'm charging at well UNDER 10 amps, due 
to the voltage drop in the wiring. The usual #10 wire plus the 
connectors lets the vehicle's voltage regulator see mostly the vehicle's 
battery, so when it's charged, the trailer isn't getting much juice.

Anyone who does a significant amount of boondocking and depends on their 
batteries to carry the load should have an eMeter or equivilant gadget 
so they KNOW what's going on with the electrical system. I figure that 
you wouldn't dream of driving a vehicle without working guages, and this 
is no different. The silly lights or analog meters that are provided by 
most RV manufacturers are pretty useless for determining battery condition.

                             <<Jim>>