Battery Issue

[Lurker]

Hey all I was trying to fix things since the last outing and I noticed that my battery was dead, so I connected it to my charger and let it sit for several hours, I then put my volt meter on it to test voltage and it sparked at me when I put the positive lead on the positive terminal. I thought that is strange, and pulled it off almost immediately and I noticed that the wires to the meter were extremely hot. I immediately disconnected the battery and now I am asking the smartest people I don't know what their thoughts are on what could be going on...please advise.

Thanks in advance.

[fmichaels]

only thing i can think of is the voltmeter is shorted (i.e., defective) voltmeters, depending on whether they are analog or digital, have a high resistance impedance so they don't put a load on the thing they are measuring. i would get another voltmeter.

[fmichaels]

you did have it on the "volts" setting, right?

[Lurker]

Originally Posted by fmichaels

you did have it on the "volts" setting, right?

Yes I did have it on the dc volts setting.

[Lurker]

Someone I work with was trying to tell me it was the power converter, has anyone had one of those go bad?

[dxrobertson]

I had a converter go bad.

I was on 120v and first noticed that the lights were very bright. Then I smelled something strange around the battery box, it was discharging gas. I pulled the 120v power plug, disconnected the battery via my switch, then disconnected the battery. I then plugged back in the 120v and checked the voltage of the RV from the 12v outlet (cigarette lighter) and it registered 24v.

It was indeed that the converter had failed, and was putting out 24v. Luckily I had caught it in time before any damage was done, including to the battery.

On your meter, maybe check it on another battery, and see what happens? If the rv battery had failed, your charger would be registering high amps and wouldnt come down, and the battery would start boiling inside. Was anything strange going on when charging?

[Lurker]

Took the battery to Interstate to have it tested and it is a failed battery. But only answers part of my issues. Now to find out why the sparks happened and to test to see what the converter is trying to charge with. I also need to decide what type of battery to put back in.

[KYCAMPER]

Your meter must be on Volts and not amps. Voltage setting is high impedence. Amps setting allows current to flow through a known value resistor, the resulting volts are measured by the meter and calculated/displayed as amps. If on the amp setting (or the meter is not correctly changing to amps) there will be some amount of current flow and could possibly cause sparking.