North America

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Not a Good Morning

I now have confirmation that there is someone out there in the ether looking over my life and laughing maniacally when I allow myself a moment of contentment and satisfaction before blowing up everything in my face.

The moron at O’Reilley’s auto parts sold me the wrong solenoid. I told him three times I did not want a starter solenoid but a continuous duty one for a motorhome. Guess what he sold me? Yes, the kind that keeps the connection open between both batteries and which sucks dry the higher performing one.

I woke up this morning to flat dead house batteries. 10.5V. We all know what happens when batteries get discharged that badly. My $15.14 part just cost me a $200 set of house batteries. I seriously doubt they can recover from this kind of abuse.

I ran the engine for a full hour and I’m now seeing 12.8V. The sun is barely up, so I know that’s not from the solar array. I can’t trust the battery monitor because it was registering that I was full up when I woke up… Since it was decalibrated, I removed the fuses and then reconnected them and now it’s registering voltage correctly. So my morning wasn’t a total waste.

I’ll talk to the guys when they’re up and about and see what it would take to get some warranty work on my solenoid repair. I suspect the warranty job will be more costly.

I’m glad the manager at O’Reilley’s witnessed the exchange yesterday so I’ll have that on my side when I go marching back in there.

It sucks that the stupid thing is so hard to get to because I know I could pull and reinstall it if I could just get to it.

Today’s mood: crushed.

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So… The New Solenoid

This is what Harold Barre has to say about using an engine alternator to charge an RV house battery on page 112 of Managing 12 Volts:

… If your house batteries are discharged to at least 50 percent of charge, the standard alternator charges your battery with about 15-20 amps until the batteries approach full charger. … You want to run the engine until the alternator output drops to about 7 or 8 amps; at this point it does not produce enough amperage to make running the engine worth while.

Keeping that in mind as well as the fact that my batteries are at about 98% right now, I am quite satisfied that as soon as I turned on the engine to Miranda tonight, voltage in the house leaped from 12.55V to 14.04V and I had 6.5A coming in. 🙂

It definitely wouldn’t be worth running the engine for two hours a day to get 12A in, but on a grey day it would be worth running the engine that long to get the 14.04V to print, charge the computers, or do whatever AC I can and want to do through my inverter.

We’ve got a grey spell ahead, so I just may let my batteries get a little lower than comfortable to see if I do get more amps when my batteries are further discharged.

It will also be interesting to see how much charge my batteries get while I am driving.

For the curious, I’ve got about 12.27V showing and I have on two LED lights, the fridge (on propane, which still needs a little DC since a modern one *g*), the whole house inverter, the UPS in the study, and three external drives. Total amps going out: 3.85. Hours till the battery is fully discharged: 35, meaning I could run like this for 21 hours.

Last but not least, I get a slightly less (and I do mean slightly) jaw dropping voltage drop when I charge the computer through the factory-installed outlet in the living room, so I will be using that one until I can hard wire in a new one in the study.

I really was ready to throw in the electrical towel, but the profound satisfaction I feel tonight makes the frustration worthwhile.

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A Little Paint and a New Solenoid

I can’t believe I was hesitant about painting the new wall yellow. It now feels like a proper room in here!!!

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I definitely need another two coats on everything.

Now, the solenoid project. As a refresher, the solenoid is what allows an RV house battery to be charged by the RV truck alternator when the RV engine is running. Mine has worked intermittently but recently failed completely.

L and his buddy B came over this afternoon and I knew immediately that my rig was in good hands because it was obvious that they knew what they were doing!

We started by testing if the solenoid would click when the key was turned to the on position. Nope. It was time to get a look at the dang thing.

Pulling the battery and getting to the solenoid required three sizes of socket wrenches. It also took two strong men to pull the battery out. Definitely not a job for me. I don’t even own socket wrenches!

Once they could get to the solenoid, they jiggled some wires, connected the battery via my heavy duty super long jumper cables, and had me turn the engine on. Click. But nothing was happening in the house.

They decided to pull the solenoid to clean the contacts. That done, we hooked it up to the battery and tested it. Click.

Next test was to check the voltage coming in from the house to make sure the problem was not at the battery bank end. 13.8V.

Next test was to check the resistance in the solenoid. Ooh… massive amounts of it. But the more we made the thing click, the less resistance there was and we finally got resistance down to almost 0. There was no way that thing was going back into my RV, not with how iffy it was and hard to get to.

So I was sent to town with the old one to find a new one. I went to O’Reilly’s auto parts and the guy at the counter knew exactly what I needed and they had one in stock. I almost fainted when he told me the cost was $50.14. The budget’s really tight this month but you got to do what you got to do. The cashier laughed when I handed him exact change. “Not fifty, fifTEEN.” As in it was a $15.40 part. WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is my old solenoid:

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The new one is identical except it’s shinier.

I got it home and made L test it before B installed it. Everything looks good on the engine side, but nothing’s happening on the house side. We think it’s because the alternator recognizes that the house batteries are full.

I am going to use a lot of power tonight once the solar cuts out (my rig needs vacuuming…) and then try the engine. If I don’t see any results, then all three of us are at a loss, and two of us are engineers! But we are optimistic!

I had to two regular Buds in the fridge and one Bud light, so we had a cold one once the hood was closed. Retired friends make for cheap labour! 😀

Croft, I know you’re waiting with bated breath for news of this project, so I will report ASAP once I do the test tonight. We’ve still got about two hours of daylight left.

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License to Kilz

I awoke to bright blue skies, a gentle sea breeze, and no pressing projects ahead of me for a few days. It was time to start work on repainting the front room!!!

Unfortunately, I had a lot less Kilz left than I thought I did, barely enough for the new wall and one side of the pocket door. I am going to need more, which sucks since I’m going to end up with leftovers.

The primer dried almost immediately, so I was able to put the first coat of yellow on the new wall. I’ll do a second coat this afternoon, then let the two cure for a day or two. That will give me time to wash down the other walls with TSP and then I’ll do two more coats over the entire room.

My boos are not happy about being locked in the rear part of the rig, which has the best view, with only food, water, the litter box, and several soft lounging spots for comfort. Must be tough being a cat.

L came over a moment ago to ask me if I wanted to work on the solenoid this afternoon. YES! So this is going to be a day for projects.

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More Electrical Woes, With a Twist

The twist being that I have solved yet another mystery. Everything is FINE. Perfect even!!!

For days now, I’ve been experiencing gigantic voltage drops in the evening. Tonight, with everything off, I was at about 12.5V. Turn on the fridge and I dropped to 11.9V. Turn on an LED light? Forget it. The voltage drop wasn’t just in the rig, I was experiencing it right at the battery. Something was very, very wrong.

So I haven’t been using any power in the evening except an LED light for just a few minutes at bedtime because I was sure my electrical system or batteries or both were on the verge of going KABOOM.

I didn’t want to put any of this on the blog because I feel that many of you have given me way too many braincells already. I had all the information any outsider could give me. It was time to do the hard work myself and until I either solved this issue or came up with a specific gravity number for my batteries, I was staying mum.

Just before dark this evening, I took some voltage readings. Could my solar array monitor be wrong? It was wildly fluctuating.

I headed outside in the waning light to take a gander at my battery bank. Or, rather, I felt around with my hands. My connections were all tight. I pulled out my flashlight and… wait a minute. Was that corrosion on the positive terminal?

And that was the missing variable, folks. We’ve all been looking at my battery issues as a textbook situation rather than in context. Where I am, context is important. I am by the ocean. I’m seeing rust form on all my exposed metal right now. So it’s obvious in hindsight that some of that salty air would end up on my batteries.

So I recleaned that terminal and then coated all my connections yet again in dielectric gel.

Now, voltage with everything off? 12.55. Fridge on? 12.48. One LED light on? 12.44. Two LED lights on? 12.4. All of the above plus the incandescent stove hood light? 12.38.

The icing on the cake is that my battery (still flashing 0.00V, mind you) is perfectly calibrated. I know I’ll have a full charge by lunch tomorrow and then I can start to plan a strategy for the couple of grey days ahead.

L has the tools and knowledge to remove my motorhome starting battery and test (and repair or replace) the solenoid, so I will try to wrangle him tomorrow afternoon to do that, and early enough to run into town to the auto parts store if we need to.

It’s been a really great day on the beach. Now, there’s a strawberry daiquiri in the freezer with my name on it!