Magnolia Beach

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The Right Part

Neighbours B and S had planned to go into town today, so they brought me along to get the correct solenoid from O’Reilly’s.

Before that, B and L gave me their opinion about what the deep discharge did to the battery. It coincides with what Barre has to say, that an occasional deep discharge like this won’t do much to affect the battery life of true deep cycle 6V golf cart batteries so long as I get it charged up again.

So my batteries are likely okay. I know there are folks out there who would never let their batteries get below 80% who are going to chime in on that and that’s fine, but I doubt I’ll have anything to say in response.

The guys pulled the old solenoid and, in reply to NW-Bound’s comment, it was fried!!! It wouldn’t click and there was tons of resistance. It had tested fine at installation (clicked and no resistance). Also in reply to NW-Bound’s comment, there was no valid number on the old part to cross-check and the old part used to work properly; it would charge my batteries when I as driving and not drain them overnight.

The weekday manager wasn’t on duty at O’Reilly’s, but the weekend manager was. I explained everything to him and he did a search for a continuous duty model, but was unable to find one. He called NAPA while a clerk called Autozone. The latter was useless, but NAPA gave another number to cross-check and that turned up the correct part in stock.

The continuous duty solenoid was $60, four times the cost of the starting model. They did right by me and did a straight up exchange. So I’d go to O’Reilly’s again, but I’d use my cell phone to cross-check a part number instead of relying on the clerk. The continuous duty model actually had a piece of paper in it explaining that it’s for a dual battery system. The starting one had no documentation, not even a part name.

L, B, and I did a lot of research this morning trying to figure out why the house battery drained over night (or, rather, why the two banks paralleled themselves and equalized to comparable voltage). If the same thing happens tonight with the correct part in, then we’ll know there’s something else going on that was being corrected by the old solenoid going bad.

L and B are both engineers and long-time RVErs so I’m in good hands here and can trust that they understand how the part is supposed to work and that they will help me figure this out.

The expression leave well enough alone is making me feel rather bitter today. *wry grin*

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Correcting A Misread on A Xantrex LinkPro Battery Monitor

Once I correctly installed my Xantrex LinkPro battery monitor, I was puzzled to see that it was correctly reporting amps and amp hours, but not the voltage.

I emailed Xantrex for help and they told me to check the voltage on the back of the terminal strip of the monitor itself. If the reading showed the same voltage as at the batteries, I had a misread problem. If there was a discrepancy, I had a wiring problem.

Checking the voltage was easy with a multimeter with pointy tips since the + and – terminals are clearly marked.

In my case, the voltage was correct, so I had a misread.

I waited until unrelated events decalibrated my monitor and then I disconnected the fuses. I installed my monitor using the Xantrex connection kit. In my kit, the fuses are in black holders connecting the thin red wires. So disconnecting the fuses was a matter of unscrewing the holders, removing the fuses (careful, they are tiny!), and then reassembling the fuse holders.

I checked the battery monitor and while it was now decalibrated, it was showing the correct voltage.

Removing the fuses allows the monitor to power down and reboot itself and is apparently the solution for a lot of problems if wiring issues have been eliminated.

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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.