K C
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Sounds like an adventure, indeed.
About 1985, I bought a 1952 AEC London double decker out of a field in Casper, Wy. I talked the seller into ‘test driving’ it to Denver where I picked it up with a motorhome and my family. We drove both rigs hop-scotching during the day (top speed of the AEC was about 45-50 mph) and staying in rv parks at night. Took about 3 days to get from Denver to Lake Havasu City, Az. It overheated regularly until the thermostat stuck shut and was removed. After that, it only overheated occasionally as long as I kept uphill speed to about 25.
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Les,
Very impressed with your remodeling project. I like the dash.
Reese
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Stumped: Did you try tilting the front bumper down? I think its back there.
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There are a lot of discussions about why charging a battery using the manufacturers recommended voltages is critical.
Our alternators are set to a voltage that is less than required for our house batteries. That is because it is primarily to charge chassis batteries which are in a hot environment and the higher voltages required to fully charge house batteries would damage chassis batteries.
What happens when a house battery is not fully charged is lead sulfate which builds on the plates requires a complete charge to remove it or it hardens and reduces the battery capacity.
If you go several days or longer without powering the inverters so the batteries are seeing a full charge cycle is shortening the battery life and when the batteries fail prematurely it is not the fault of the battery, but charging conditions not being met.
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When I bought the first bus in 1990 Interstate had a distributor that lived near me. We decided they would allow me to test their new gel cell batteries which they were planning to market.
It wasn’t long before the first set had an issue, and they were replaced. I cannot remember what the initial problem was. But the second set had a problem I will never forget. We were in Freeport ME getting dressed to do some shopping at LL Bean when I heard a loud bang and the odor of rotten eggs. One of the batteries exploded.
The final issue happened in my garage and it was another failed battery with a cracked case due to internal pressures.
I went back to conventional batteries after that and I believe Interstate abandoned their intent to market gel cell batteries.
We learned a lot. First, unlike the wet cell batteries gel cell were extremely sensitive to charging voltages. My alternator was set to the 27.7 voltage, but that was the top charging voltage for the gel cell batteries. Unfortunately the batteries were near the engine, over the chassis and the heat combined with no temperature compensation killed the batteries.
When AGM came out they were far less sensitive to conditions that would destroy a gel cell and I have been using AGM for about 15 years and have never had an issue. Compared to gel cell they are less adversely affected by charging currents and temperature. That does not mean you should ignore those conditions, but if you live near the Canadian border and also travel in Phoenix in the summer they are likely to outperform a gel cell set by far. If your batteries are not exposed to heat and not charged at a voltage that is too high the gel cell batteries will likely OK, but the bottom line is they are not very forgiving.
I’m not sucking up to Tom or trying to sell batteries but I am sharing what I have learned the hard way. If you do buy batteries from Tom he may feel sorry for me and share some dues money, however.