[Archived]

David,

Any chance it’s using the block heater plug to power the charger? If so, the breaker may be the only source to turn the charger on or off.. Just a thought, I had one that was controlled that way.

[Chas]

David,

As Tom says, if it was installed aftermarket the easiest place to power it up is through the engine block heater receptacle. Perhaps another Vantare owner could help because that’s the only place I have seen them powered if the converter did not install it.

[Jerry]

Thanks guys,

It is a Vantare installation and there is a circuit breaker but it flashes red/green indicating a thrown breaker. This happens even when the Guest charger is removed from the circuitry. There’s an air compressor on the same breaker. Anyone know where it’s located? I suspect I have an issue there. For the time being the Guest is plugged into the wall and charging away. 🙂

[Archived]

C’mon Vantare experts, jump in here and help David.

As an aside however charging the chassis batteries should be considered a rare event. Unless someone set the coach up with phantom loads on the chassis batteries they should never need charging unless you are doing service work and draining the batteries such as keeping the lights on with the engine off.

I literally can go 3 or more months with the bus parked, the coach master switches “on” and when I hit the key the bus spins and fires.

[Bob]

That’s impressive Jon, to be able to go 3 months. My Vantare drained the chassis batteries within 3 weeks. I assumed the Guest was on – newbie mistake. It doesn’t help that my garage isn’t in my backyard. It will be soon though; I’m working on an addition to my Morton Building. Should be done in a couple months. The phantom load problem will have to wait for another day. Thanks!

[Peter]

My older Vantare XL plugs into a receptacle on the engine block heater circuit as some one already said so I am no help to you.

Davy

[Archived]

Thanks Davy. I looked thru my Vantare Service Informaiton Booklet which contains all the electrical schematics for my coach and it looks like the 120VAC air compressor is housed in the generator enclosure – I neglected to look there. There also appears to be a relay in the Guest charger control circuitry that’s controlled by the ignition key. I imagine when the ignition key is on, the relay opens to power down the Guest charger. I have a few things to look at when I get back to the coach. 🙂

[Archived]

David,

My ability to go for months without turning off the coach master switces or charging the chassis batteries has been typical of all of my 3 Liberty coaches, and Vantare did a good conversion so I suspect they also would not have put phantom loads on the chassis batteries. What you might not know is if a previous owner got creative and added something to the coach, using chassis power.

Having said that I believe the Guest charger is a 3 stage so it might do no harm to have it on as a battery maintainer like our inverters are for our house batteries.

[Archived]

David,

Just so you know, some of those Guest chargers have melted down. I saw one that literally melted dropping hot case material on top of the chassis battery cover. In this case, the owner happened to walk into his garage during meltdown and unplug the coach. The other case resulted in the loss of the coach. These were both late model XL coaches.

Hopefully, Guest corrected their problem with these chargers. I never looked into the cause as I don’t have a Guest charger, mine is an IOTA, and I would never consider a dual output 12V charger for a 24V requirement. BTW, these were mounted upside down directly above the chassis bank.

[Lee]

Thanks Gil, I appreciate it. Probably time for an upgrade and I’m with you on wanting a single output 24V charger. What model Iota are you using? What I want is to have my Trace inverter/chargers charge the chassis bank, but I understand the well defined interface converter’s like to preserve between chassis and house.

[Larry & Diane]

David,

It sounds like your house battery bank is 24V. If so, charging the chassis batteries is easy from the charger/inverters and can be done without risk of drawing the chassis batteries down. I recommrnd this product to accomplish this: http://www.bluesea.com/products/category/Automatic_Charging_Relays/ML-ACRs

If you prefer a dedicated chassis battery charger, here’s the IOTA product I have is this one http://www.iotaengineering.com/dls.htm. Get the smart charge option. BTW, mine is installed in the tool box bay just ahead of the engine bay to protect it from the elements. This came on my coach, so I didn’t research a charger. I suspect there may be other marine grade low capacity chargers.