[Tom]

Dean,

I am not familiar with your conversion but on my marathon with heavy use of the electrical system say on a hot day when the inverter is kicking in to help… I have noticed going to bulk as well but generally 3-4 hours later its back to float.

Bill

[Davy]

Thanks Bill

That has happened with mine in the past but this time it has stayed on bulk for almost 24 hours. I am starting to get concerned if this may cause a problem.

[Archived]

Prolonged bulk charging is not good. However if you have any loads of singinficance the inverters are working to match the discharge with a charge rate.

My initial reaction if I noted the problem on my coach would be to reduce all loads to only the phantom loads I cannot control and see how long the coach inverter(s) stays in bulk..

Keep in mind that one bad battery can mess up the charge cycle on your inverters so if I saw an abnormal time period for bulk charge I would test all batteries individually. One bad battery can cause weird problems.

[Archived]

I have the charger set at 10 amps on that inverter and it is not real hot here today so I only have two air conditioners running.

In my experience in trucking if one battery was bad it usually ran hotter than the rest. These all seem to by about the same tempature. I have no way to load test them here but they were put in May of 2010 so I suppose they could need to be replaced.

[Dean]

It is possible you could have had a pole power interruption that lasted a few minutes. The way the Vantare is set up the power can kick out and you will never know it unitl the load becomes big enough or the batteries low enough to start the generator. However, the batteries should have went back into float by now. I would increase the charge rate to 15 on that inverter.

Davy

[Peter]

Now that I see they are 5 years old it reinforces my guess tha batteries need to be checked.

Even if you don’t have a load tester, charge them until the inverters go to float, then turn off the inverters, seperate the batteries electrically by removing the cables and after a half day or so check each battery’s voltage. If one is bad it will show up with much lower voltage than the others.

[Archived]

Dean,

What inverters do you have? My Trace 4000’s can easily be adjusted if that happens by turning off the bulk/absorption and put the inverter in float. You do that by reducing the charge time to zero. I keep my inverters in float only mode until bulk/absorption charge is needed. If I run from pole to pole, no point in allowing the inverters to go to bulk/absorption charge as soon as you plug back in after running all day, the batteries are full.

[Peter]

I also have 2002 Vantare. This can happen with one of two scenarios. The first is a battery that has gone bad in the group of batteries connected to that inverter. The other is when there is either one leg at the pole that has gone bad, only allowing one leg into the bus, or an interuption in the power from the pole. If it was very hot out, or running alot of electrical draw, this could be a fairly normal situation, but that is not what you described. With your description would look for bad battery after first checking to make sure pole is suppling power to both legs.

[Charles]

I am sure I do not understand the elictrical system on this bus so here is what I did and for now the problem has corrected itself.

I turned the charging on that inverter from 5 amps to 15 amps and within a few hours it went to float. I have left the other inverter at 5 amps and things seem to be ok this morning. The reason I turned them both to 5 amps is when we first got here we were blowing the breaker on the post so I turned both chargers to 5 amps and that was fine for probably 2 weeks then the one inverter went to bulk. They also came and put in a new breaker so I am not sure which actaully cured the problem.

[Archived]

I assume if you had both inverters charging at a 5 amp rate you were not using any current at all. If you had anything turned on that drew enough current, that when combined with the phantom loads it exceeded the 10 amp charging current the inverters were going into bulk to try to keep up with a discharge that was greater than the charge.

[Peter]

I have mine charging at 15 amps each. Otherwize, they will not keep up. I understand a lower setting to save amperage, but under normal situations, I very rarely ever have to change mine from 15 amps charging rate.

[AL]

Setting an inverter charge rate requires some understanding of the power being used.

Our inverters are the only way our house batteries are being charged when we are not driving. On most coaches when the generator is running or when we are connected to shore power the 120 volt loads are just passing through the inverter direct to the appliance or device. But 12 or 24 volt loads such as interior lights are drawing power directly from the batteries so the inverter charging current setting has to be enough to replace that current draw.

Generally a low charging setting is adequate because when we are asleep and there are low or no loads the batteries will get charged.

Vantare coaches have a different set up than most other coaches so the inverter charging current has to be set to perform as required for that system design.

[Ronald]

Thanks all

As Jon says working with the inverters takes understanding of how the power is being used. I will be the first to admit I do not understand it very well. I thought when we were pluged in that there was very little power being used from the batteries so 5 amps would be enough to keep up and would allow us to use more of the 50 amps for everything else.

For now I have both inverters set at 10 amps and for the last few days all has been well so I am going to leave them there until I get a better understanding.

Also I am not completely convinced that there is not a problem with the place we are staying. Until we got here we had no problems. I have complained and they changed the braker on the post and that seemed to help.

[Dick]

Dean, as far as I am concerned, Jon’s last line in his last post is important. I have recently had this conversation with Ben at Parliament as he is the architect of the Vantare system. Do not let somebody modify it. If you have questions, call him or if you are near Fla. stop in. Geo.

[Fred F.]

George gets a gold star for his post because he is cautioning about letting folks not familiar with a Vantare work on one.

Their inverter and electrical system is not like most conversions. That does not mean it is no good, it just means someone thinking “conventional system” is going to possibly not do proper work on a system that does not mimic the others.

Both Ben at Parliament and Donny Meyers should be the only people to provide advice on that system. They know it well and will keep you or a mechanic out of trouble.