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No Power to the Bus
Long story short. Bus had been plugged into 50 amp service in my shop. All has been good.
Went to get a car off a 4 post lift sitting next to the bus. I had to flip the breaker in the main power box to get power to the lift as most everything in that building except for the bus is always completely shutoff all the time.
Did my business with the car on the lift. Put it back up in the air. Went to shut off the breaker to the lift and instead flipped the breaker off on the 50 amp power to the bus. I go out two weeks later and no power to the inverters, batteries appear dead and no power to the bus now.
I have power at the plug and coming thru the voltage spike protector but no power to the control panel inside the bus.
Any tips on what to do next. I expect I’ll need house batteries since mine have about aged out. I hear that Vantare coaches run all of the electrical power thru the house batteries. I’d rather wait and buy the batteries when I can use the bus in the late spring than now in the dead of winter here in Indiana.
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9 Replies
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Generally if the house batteries are dead you have to get some power into them before the inverters can come alive and do their charging. Try starting the coach and that should get enough power into the batteries so you can charge then and get things back to normal.
Let us know because that works for Liberty coaches, and if it works for yours it might be a universal fix for a problem.
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John: On our Liberty, if the chassis batteries are taken down far enough neither the shore power (presumably through the inverter/chargers), nor the generator (presumably through the inverter/chargers), nor the alternator on the big Detroit Diesel will bring them back. This was my situation. Jeff Rowe explained “why” to me once, but I’ve lost that somewhere. I think whatever machine is doing the charging, has to see a charge before it will give a charge.
If you decide to follow my suggestion below, please remove all your jewellery (especially from your neck, hands, fingers, and wrists) and remove any metal belt buckle you might have on. If the batteries for some unexpected reason have juice in them, if you short out a connection with a metal (especially gold) ring, watch, or necklace you will experience something you will never forget.
I don’t know if what I’m about to tell you will work on your brand of coach or not. This is what Jeff told me to do on our 1999 Liberty (24 volt coach). Jeff told me (as Jon has suggested) that the batteries need some juice before they will accept a charge from the inverter/chargers (via shore power or generator power) or the alternator on the DD. He had me look at the house battery cut-off switches in our electrical bay. One is 24 volt, one is 12 volt. These are very large, high amp on/off switches (very similar to the “master switch” you might see in a race car). On the 12 volt cut-off switch, he had me hook the positive lead from my small Craftsman 12 volt car/truck battery charger to the incoming battery side of the switch on its back side. Negative from the battery charger goes to something steel on the chassis. Getting to the back side of the cut-off switch was not easy. I had to do this because our house batteries are “buried” behind stuff and are not easy to get to. If your house batteries are easy to get to, maybe you won’t have get to the back of the cut-off switch.
After a few hours, the house batteries should get some juice in the. You can unhook the 12 volt charger and plug the shore power in to see if the house batteries will accept a charge. If they won’t, try firing up the Detroit and see if the house batteries will accept a charge from its alternator. If not, you’re back to the 12 volt car/truck charger for a while. If the house batteries will accept a charge from the alternator on the Detroit, let that charge it for a while and eventually you’ll get the batteries to the point where they will accept a charge from the inverter/chargers powered by shore power (or your generator).
Keep in mind this is what worked on our 24 volt 1999 Liberty. If someone had a 12 volt Liberty of similar vintage I would probably do the same thing without much hesitation.
I think I’ve covered everything. If I’ve left out anything I expect others on the forum will fill in the holes or even provide you with another avenue to follow. Like I said, this is what worked on our Liberty.
If it turns out you need batteries, Tom is your man. Good luck!
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When you’re ready for batteries John, let me know. There are some show pricing coming in Feb and Apr, could save you some bucks.
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The only person I know that killed their bus (I won’t mention names) it was an 06 Marathon with Xantrex inverters.
All that needed to be done was plug it in and turn the inverters back on at the remote panel and it charged.
Later
bv
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If the coach in question has a 50DN alternator, that unit is actually a generator and as such, can resurrect a dead battery, unlike a alternator. Since our buses have another device on board that we call a “generator”, we should not refer to the 50DN as a “generator”, although that is what it is.
Generator: has its wire windings spinning inside a fixed magnetic field, produces design capacity voltage all the time, requires a voltage regulator, is less efficient than a alternator, can recharge a dead battery.
Alternator: has its magnetic field spinning inside fixed wire windings, produces only the voltage that the loads demand, is more efficient than a generator, will not charge a dead battery.
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Neither will fully charge an AGM.
Our 50 DN’s are alternators, producing 75% of it’s capacity at idle.
Jeff and Lindsay
91 Marathon XL -
Tom makes a very valid point and it should be emphasized and explained.
Battery life and amount of charge are both dependent upon using the charging protocol the battery manufacturer requires. Our batteries are expensive and we need to get both the best performance and life from them and the only way to do that is to insure they are charged as specified by the manufacturer.
When a battery is discharged to needs to be recharged using charging voltages specified. A typical bulk charge voltage is going to be about 14.4 (28.8) volts. After a full charge the maintenance voltage (float) is going to be about 13.6 (27.2) volts.
It is wrong to assume that after driving all day that the house batteries are fully charged. A typical voltage on our coach electrical system is about 27.7 with some 12 volt coaches having a voltage about 1/2 that voltage.
Unless the batteries are fully charged routinely the lead plates will end up with a sulfate coating reducing the amount of current available from the batteries and shortening the battery life. As almost every coach is set up, only our inverters can properly and fully charge batteries so it is always a good idea to be connected to shore power or using the generator (not the engine driven alternator) to provide power to inverters so the batteries can be fully charged.
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Dans post is very interesting. It answers the question as to why starting your engine will revive completely dead batteries while a charger or inverter often will not. Thanks for that Dan.
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