-
Rally – Lifeline Battery Discounts – Bella Terra
-
By Law any battery in an enclosed area like this has to be a sealed or AGM. My build sheet calls for a AGM Group 24 and how that Odyssy got in there I don’t know.
It now has a group 24 AGM.
Later
bv
-
So let me figure this out. Tom is giving a discount for batteries at the gathering. Say this is a 20% discount, can I attend 5 gatherings and get them free?
-
Mikee, go to your room…
-
Mikee, I am waiting on the Buy One Get One Free sale, I would even go for the Buy Two Get One Free what do you think?????????
-
No
problem on the BOGO’s boy’s, but you won’t like the price…Bernie
– What Jon’s Liberty does not have is a solar panel for the gen
battery, so talk about redundancy…. I’ll have to try the shut off deal and see if mine starts. -
That’s correct driver, back then Libertys didn’t have a battery boost to start the bus but they have a gen battery boost???
Who am I to say.
Later
bv
-
Why would anyone need a battery boost to start the bus?
Seriously?
The last time I saw a Marathon owner demonstrate proudly his ability to start the bus from his house batteries was because he had been doing that for months because he was too cheap to buy new ones, and his coach looked like it.
-
Ah, dead chassis batteries would be a good reason for the option to boost, don’t you think?
-
When I bought my bus, I knew the chassis batteries were bad and I had to use the “jump” batteries several days until I got to Jeff’s to replace. Nice to know it’s there … just in case.
I’ll have to try shutting off the 12/24v also and see if the genny starts. I have four years on my house batteries (4/13), so I figure I’ll replace them and the gen batt next year, since they’re located next to each other.
Have a great time at Bella Terra, unfortunately we’ll be heading to D.C. for Dr. stuff …
Jeff and Lindsay
91 Marathon XL -
Do all you Marathon guys wait until your batteries are dead before you replace them?
-
Had a pretty new chassis batt suffer a broken plate…boost was a life saver. Geo.
-
Had a five month old battery fail. Would have loved to have had the jump thing setup.
The more frustrating part is that it appears to be only one way to really, really test to see if the batteries are OK or if one is defective … unhook all the batteries, separate them, then charge and load test them. This typically entails removing them from the bus. Its a ton of work. If anyone else knows of a better way, I’m all ears!
Thanks goodness it doesn’t happen often. But I’ve been thinking it would be nice for one cable from each post on each battery to go to its own post on a box (input side), the box would have dedicated posts to provide power to the various chassis loads (output side), with switches for each input side cable. This would allow all the batteries to be disconnected from each other, their respective grounds, and their respective loads … which could be the same as removing the batteries from all the complicated wiring and the coach.
With the flipping of eight switches the batteries are unhooked and each could be load tested, if necessary charged and again load tested to find the possible bad battery quickly so it can be replaced by removing only its two wires.
The “box” would have to be mounted near the battery bank and would contain inside of it all the wiring to create the 12 and 24 volt outputs as well as support the equalilzer, charger, DDEC load, etc. Small voltmeters could be incorporated to provide the output voltage of the combined batteries as well as individual batteries when they are all isolated.
Thoughts.
-
Guys,
I get it. It would be nice if Liberty and all converters did a lot of things and eventually they may all actually end up with the things we find to be very helpful.
But until that time comes we get what we get and are free to modify our coaches to do what we want if we consider something important. I have done a lot of changes as I am sure a lot of others have.
But a premature battery failure in the context of the number of coaches out there and the number of batteries each coach has, those are isolated incidents. As a parallel you are more likely to have other failures like a refrigerator, or an alternator or even a bad tire yet nobody seems to carry spares for them or have one on standby.
My point is instead of a switch for the rare and sudden battery failures we are better off keeping fresh batteries in the coach instead of relying on the switch to signal it is time to replace batteries. Using a coach with a battery with failed internals can get exciting if the failure is an internal short. Be careful out there.
-
While Jon is pretty much correct … in essence we have what we have because that is what the converters provided us … its still frustrating dealing with some of these issues. When my five month old battery failed, I was trying to diagnosing it on the phone with Jeff Rowe. That very last thing we thought the problem could be was a bad, five month old battery! If the coach had the switch box I outlined above, we would have determined the problem in less than an hour rather than screwing around with other stuff for a few days before removing all the batteries and schlepping them to Interstate and waiting for them to individually charge and load test all the batteries.
Jon wrote: “As a parallel you are more likely to have other failures like a refrigerator, or an alternator or even a bad tire yet nobody seems to carry spares for them or have one on standby.”
So I’ve had the bad chassis battery, my Vanner monitor burned up, the Vanner equalizer failed, and the original Amana refrigerator quit. All of these things happened at home and NOT on the road or on a trip (although two weekend trips were canceled) and we didn’t lose any food. Because those things happened at home, do they “count”? Do I have to experience them again on the road for them to “count”? I realize I should expect for the alternator to fail and have a bad tire. I wonder if those will be discovered at home or on the road.
In spite of those and other experiences with the coach we’re very happy with our decision to buy the coach and we really enjoy it. There are two things that make a HUGE contribution to our enjoyment of the coach:
1. Jeff Rowe and his crew at East Tennessee Luxury Coach in Vonore, TN.
2. The Prevost Community Forum and all the contributors.
-
Some failures have an ability to work around them. A Vanner monitor doesn’t count. If it fails don’t worry about it until you have a chance to replace it, but make sure you watch the gauges.
An equalizer can stop you, but if the balance light comes on don’t drive at night so the lights don’t suck all the 12V power out of the bus, and at night use a Walmart 12V charger to restore the 12V side of the batteries.
An alternator? Use a battery charger and do not run any Prevost accessories like lights or AC.
A bad combo brake diaphragm? Cage the brake and plug the line, but get it fixed ASAP. A bad service brake diaphragm? Plug the air line and get it fixed ASAP.
But bad batteries are not sommething I want to drive with, especially if it is an internal short, even if I can get the bus started. A bad refrigerator? Start eating fast.
Everything that can break needs to have a planned action associated with it. I am amazed at the times we read of folks getting towed or ending a trip when something that has a work around quits. Some things do end a trip, but most of the time a failure of something is an inconvenience, not a trip ending event.
Log in to reply.