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New Coach
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Thomas,
Home running each battery to a buss bar is another great move on Vantare’s part. I’ve never heard of another converter making the small investment to do it right. This added to the external inverter/charge bypass relay is really making Vantare look like they knew their stuff on the electrical system. My bet is their electrical engineer had marine experience.
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Diane I would appreciate it if you would send me your settings so I can compare to mine.
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Thomas,
Give a call to Ben Cummings at Coach Works now part of Parliment Coach in Clearwater FL. Ben is an electrical engineer and nows most all coaches well. He too can probably send you the settings. That would at least give you confirmation that your settings are okay.
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Just a general comment on inverter settings.
The way an owner uses the coach should determine settings, specifically the charge current. If an owner typically runs from shore power to shore power or makes it a habit to run the generator when not on shore power or driving, a lower charge current might be a better choice because with 50 amp shore power a high charge rate is going to limit other loads such as how many AC units you can run at any given time.
If on the other hand you dry camp a lot, or prefer to run off of batteries and use generator auto-start you likely would benefit from a very high charge current so you can restore depleted batteries quickly.
What has to be a constant however is the charging voltages for the various phases of charging must meet the battery manufacturer’s recommended values. Failure to meet the manufacturer’s requirements can ruin a set of batteries. The temperature sensors play an important role because the charging voltages vary with battery temperature.
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I got my batteries replaced saturday and took the coach out for the night and checked it out. First of all they work great and the issue of not being able to turn on an air conditioner is resolved. They work great. However we ended up with two long scratches on the passenger side due to a branch and the floor around the auquhot was soaked and water was drippinig under the coach from that area. I’ll post a message under that secion for the leak. Thanks everyone for the advice on the batteries,
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Tom you said that all the battery date codes should match. On the 8 new batteries six have code FM and two have code EM.
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E is May and F is June. Last week of the month and likely first week of the month. They’re fresh for sure.
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Tom:
***** Edit – I went back and reread the thread and see what happened. Some of my post still applies. ****
I don’t think so. Without the house batteries on a Vantare’, you cannot power up the control boards. You need those to start and stop the generator. Even the switch for the relay to give chassis battery boost to start the gen is non-functional. Everything else, blinds, sliding doors, bed lifts, lights are all down with no power to the relays. I have not tried putting the coach into shore bypass and seeing what works. My ****guess**** is still without batteries, main board function will be non existent. However, AC circuits will probably work.
My suggestion to the OP is to get the inverter manual, and copy the pages describing the setup. Annotate those with the proper settings (hopefully supplied by the dealer) and keep the notes near the inverter control panel.
One question comes to mind. When you took delivery of the coach are you sure the batteries were completely charged?
Another, when you are on the alternator/battery source when in transit, are you certain that you should be running all the roof tops?
A third, were you told anything about limiting power consumption while in transit or any other time you are not on shore power?
A fourth, What inverters are you using and what are the current settings. Associated, do you know how to set them up and do you know what are the proper settings?
A fifth, did anyone check the wiring inside the inverter service connection box to see if anything has loosened or broken?
Hope that helps. Good luck and ask if you need support.
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This is a comment based solely on gut feel and follows Ed’s questions.
Coaches without OTR are generally set up so the air conditioners can be run through inverters. The concern I have is that the greater the air conditioning load the closer to component capacities you get. Obviously as Thomas has learned the inverters have a limit to how much of a load they can carry. But so does the alternator. Assuming the 270 amp alternator and 24 volt inverters the air conditioners are pulling about 65 amps at 24 volts (13 at 120) so two of them running is consuming 50% of the alternator’s output. Keep adding load and the alternator is approaching its capacity. An alternator heats up the harder it works and I would be concerned about enough oil flow to draw away the heat.
Exceed the capacity and the inverters are drawing down battery voltage.
Like anything else on our coaches there is a price to pay for loading the alternator and that is a load imposed on the engine. We don’t have free lunches. If you had OTR it also imposes a load on the engine. Presuming two coaches running in the same conditions one with inverter powered AC units and one with OTR, to maintain temperatures the engine’s load should be near equal because energy is energy.
So my question is if a coach does not have OTR, why not run the generator when it is necessary to power two or more AC units? Lightly loaded the generators do not consume much fuel and there is no way a generator will be overloaded. And our generators do not get enough use anyway.
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Energy is energy, but that that’s producing it has an effciency factor. So, not all sources of a given draw will require the same power. Also, when you are powering something like an air conditioner compressor the startup surge current could be high. The batteries, when powering the AC through an inverter will absorb much of the start up current.
I’m with Jon, why run an AC powered air conditioner through an inverter when you have a perfectly capable generator.
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I dont run more than one roof unit per inverter and they use about 15 amps each and with the new batteries works just fine now.
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I personally would run my generator for 2 ac’s even for 1 ac… my generator loves to run and loves being under a full load.. I think Jon determined sometime back that our genset had the highest recorded hours (forgotten how many) of the many who said how many hours they had on theirs and mine was way over double as many… It runs great… quiet and clean just like it should. The fuel consumption is minimal compared to the benefits. We can’t even hear it running when we stop if the ac’s are on.
Just our personal preference.
Diane -
Thomas,
Our generators are more than capable of 30,000 to 40,000 hours of service. Lightly loaded such as a couple of air conditioners they likely will not consume a half gallon of fuel per hour.
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That will likely become standard transportation in the future as we try to go to all electric cars and the electrical grid is completely overwhelmed.
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Please hide this post before Tom sees it. Dont need him to “trade up” again
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