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Batteries for 02 Vantare
I am not sure what I have for house batteries in my 02 Vantare XLII. Vantare puts them in such a place that it makes it diffcult to get at them so I am hopping that someone will have an answer.
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12 Replies
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On my 02 Vantare I have 8 4D batteries for the coach. Do not know if yours is identical. The placement is very dififcult to access.
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Yes mine are on the driver side in the second bay behind the invertors. They put a door to close them off and use the rest of the bay for storage with a slideout tray in it. The best I can figure is that I will have to take the slideout tray out in order to get at them.
I am also considering only putting four batteries instead of eight in when I replace them because I do very very little dry camping. Does any one have any experience with doing that
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Dean,
The only reason you might need more than 4 batteries is if you run a lot of inverter powered equipment when driving down the road. Let’s say you are running 3 120V air conditioners @ 15A+ per unit. That’s roughly 450A of power if they are running at once. Of course, or hopefully, they would all cycle when the coach cools down. Although, in this configuration, you would likely have 250A+ of charging capability from the alternator, that’s only at the rated RPM of the alternator. So, when you are stopped of doing a lot of stop and go driving through town, the batteries need capacity to take care of the loss of the full capabilities of the alternator. You can see in this example, that the batteries may be supplying current to the appliances all of the time if the average load of the appliances exceeds the capacity of the alternator. Some new coaches can only run 6 hours or so with the batteries and alternator they have when driving. If they are driving longer with large inverter loads they are expected to run the generator.
Generally, for those not dry camping or powering more than one 120V air conditioning unit, your move to 4 batteries should not a problem. I will never install 6 8D batteries again.
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Gil.
Under most circumstances I would be in total agreement, however in a Vantare 100% of the electrical loads go through the inverters and the batteries likely play a significant role in that set up.
I don’t know, but wouldn’t advise anyone with a Vantare to reduce the number of batteries until it was further investigated.
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Definetly a question for Ben C, but given how Vantare uses the batteries and inverters, I think Jon probably already answered it.
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Like I said, it has to do with total DC load, to include inverter loads while using the alternator. The total load while on shore or generator should not matter. If it does the chargers are too small. That is not the case with 2 Trace 4000.
Call Ben, he designed some of those systems to confirm.
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Mine has 8 4D batteries and I replaced them two years ago. I was very careful to diagram everything while changing them. My intention was to understand the system well enough to reduce the battery bank to 4 batteries the next time I change them.
After having a battery bank working at full capacity I doubt I will ever reduce the number of batteries. Although we are not boondockers in any conventional use of the word we do travel every week and and with a great battery bank we can be much more flexible with our stops. It is nice to be able to stop for 5-6 hours to rest or visit with friends or shop and not have to run the generator. With full batteries I can run the fridge, computers and lights for a couple of days with no worries.
Davy
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I agree with Jon and Davy & George & Corey on this one… The Vantare is unique in its wiring… be very careful what you do.. It’s very easy to manage the power and has some advantages over other coaches if you learn how to manage your system which I suggest that you do.
Talk to Ben cummings from Coachworx he is your go to man on this and when you are ready for fresh batteries call Tom Chilcote (Truk4u) Trans Specialist… he will get you a good deal on batteries.
Good luck !
Diane
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Thanks everyone for your input.
Would it be possible to put four batteries in and if I found that wasn’t enough then add the other four?
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Dean, I would put a call into Ben Cumming 813 830 8619 before you change anything. we recently got a Vantare and the electrical/charging/inverting and use of batteries is much different than what we were used to in the past. It’s a very good system and one is able to manage it in ways that other systems are not able to be managed, but we have treaded carefully as we are learning it, thanks to Ben. BTW we are in Milwaukee for the summer, if you have any questions feel free to call 941 779 5018 George
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Dean, you can apply a no risk, no reward consideration to your question. Unless you make permanent modifications to your coach bay or structure, trying 4 batteries in place of 8 seems like a low risk test. I would guess you have a 12/24 volt set up so cutting the battery capacity in half shouldn’t prevent you from retaining that method of connecting batteries. You can expect to have some cables and maybe an equalizer left over, but retain them along with the space and structure of 8 batteries and head out to try your new set up.
The worst thing that is going to happen is you will find problems when you start to load up the system or you attempt to do some long time periods without the use of shore power or the generator. If you do, either go back to 8 batteries or change how you use the coach and manage energy.
But do as others suggest and talk to Ben. The devil is in the details and there might be some system design features you have to consider when you modify it.
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FWIW… when we bought our Vantare the batteries were history so we bought new Dekka batteries that saved us (so we thought) a bunch of $$$ …. they lasted 33 months and were useless… then thanks to Tom Chilcote we got new Lifelines at a great price delivered to our mechanic.
My point being when the batteries start going south a lot of wierd “stuff” starts happening… things not working like they should & so on… I thought we had some serious electrical problems, which all went away with the new lifelines so for that reason I would be very reluctant to change anything in the setup.
Hope this helps.
Cheers, Diane
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