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Old 12-14-2017, 10:34 PM   #1
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Seneca Coach batteries

The original Harris batteries on my 2016 Seneca HJ are junk!!
Jayco has offered to warranty original batteries .
Has anyone swapped thier bank of 4 12 volt coach batteries to 6volt?
Thoughts ????
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Old 12-14-2017, 11:14 PM   #2
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Switched to 4 trojan 105's
Fit in tray with 2x4's for spacers. Had to remount a solenoid a little higher as 6v are a little taller.

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Old 12-15-2017, 12:22 AM   #3
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Seneca Coach batteries

Looking at this for next year when these give out. They drop voltage much faster then I would expect. Also I noticed that the new 2018.5 units have 6 battery slideout trays. I am going to see if this tray can be retrofitted into my unit and if so then I will go with six six volt batteries. We camp a lot in the vt state parks and with the trees solar is not going to help much and the generator allowable hours are fairly restrictive. So getting max hours would help significantly.


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Old 12-15-2017, 07:42 AM   #4
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You would greatly increase the amp hours by going to 6 volt batteries. Let’s take an average 12 V deep cell RV battery. It has 75 amp hours. Multiply that by 4 and your total bank has 300 amp hours. Now, take a typical 6 V RV battery. It has 216 amp hours at 6 V, two batteries are required to make 12V and you get 216 amp hours at 12v (not 436!). 4 batteries however, give you 436 amp hours so about 45% more battery power.
Two things when converting from 12V batteries to 6V. First, the wiring is different because each pair of batteries need to be wired in series to get 12V, then each pair gets wires in parallel to another pair to create the bank off batteries. Second, although you can go a lot longer in between generator runs for recharging, when you do, the generator will have to run longer to charge the batteries. All things being equal (which they are not) a 6V battery doesn’t take any longer to charge than a 12V, but they hold so much more energy and therefore take longer to put that energy back into the battery. For example, let’s say you run all day on your current batteries. At 7pm, they need to be recharged. It takes 1 hour if generator time to get them full. If you had 6V batteries, they would not need recharging at 7pm, but if you did, it would still take 1 hour to fully recharge them. If you waited until morning, that’s when they would need charging but now it would take 1.5 hours to charge. You ran 50% longer between charging and it takes 50% longer time to charge them back to full.

Hope this helps a little.
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Old 12-15-2017, 02:13 PM   #5
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Switched over a while ago to 4 Trojan T-105 batteries and haven't had any issues. I also had the Harris "dual-purpose" batteries originally and they failed early, likely from going dead and freezing before I got my unit. Jayco would have warrantied the batteries, but I knew from owning two Class C rigs before I wanted real deep-cycle batteries in the Seneca. In my TS I didn't have to change any components around, they fit and slide in without any modifications other than the way they are series/parallel connected as described in the earlier post.

One thing I did and highly recommend is a central watering system. Trojan calls theirs the HydroLink system. Makes water level maintenance a snap. You hook up the filling hose with bulb pump to the battery hose quick-disconnect hose, stick suction hose in distilled water jug, and pump until you can't anymore. Every cell filled equally. No popping off caps to eyeball the level and try to hit all the holes without overfilling. Worth every penny I spent on the system!
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Old 12-15-2017, 06:25 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by srxhare View Post
The original Harris batteries on my 2016 Seneca HJ are junk!!

Jayco has offered to warranty original batteries .

Has anyone swapped thier bank of 4 12 volt coach batteries to 6volt?

Thoughts ????


Changed mine to 4 6volts. Way better. You won’t be sorry!


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Old 12-16-2017, 07:09 PM   #7
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Trojan T-105

I would highly recommend the 6 volt especially if you do any dry camping - Jayco paid for ours under warranty
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Old 12-16-2017, 08:49 PM   #8
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thanks for all of the input, I know the wiring setup needs to be different .
anyone have a diagram or pics or how they hooked up the 6 volt setup?
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Old 01-08-2018, 07:47 PM   #9
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batteries

Need to do something with the battery issue here. The inverter and/or battery combo we currently have shuts the microwave off after 10 seconds. Four Interstate deep cycle a couple years old. I've read all the four T-105 six volt vs four 12 volt anything but am curious about the Trojan T-1275 twelve volt in a 4 battery configuration for total amperage. Any advise?
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Old 01-08-2018, 08:16 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RoWest View Post
Need to do something with the battery issue here. The inverter and/or battery combo we currently have shuts the microwave off after 10 seconds. Four Interstate deep cycle a couple years old. I've read all the four T-105 six volt vs four 12 volt anything but am curious about the Trojan T-1275 twelve volt in a 4 battery configuration for total amperage. Any advise?
Do you have the stock Xantrex Prosine 1800 watt unit? Do you get a "LOW BATT SHUTDOWN" error message when it cuts out? Mine would do something similar when it was in the "POWERSAVE" mode, without any error message displayed. I shut off the POWERSAVE mode and it worked as expected. It shouldn't work like that, but mine did.

As far as the battery question, I haven't researched the Trojan 12-volt units. My initial impression, and I could be way off base, is that any 12-volt battery in a similar size case must have thinner plates than a 6-volt with the same footprint. And for maximum longevity, thicker plates are supposedly better. Now for short-duration, high-current bursts; thinner (but more) plates in the case are better.

I would be interested to see what Trojan quotes as the life cycle of the 12-volt battery as compared to their 6-volt batteries. Again it my belief that thicker plates = more charge/discharge cycles. But maybe there has been a breakthrough I am not aware of. And I also wonder what the cost of four 12-volt "true" deep-cycle batteries is compared to a unit like the T-105 6-volt battery. Very interested to hear what your research uncovers!
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Old 01-08-2018, 08:57 PM   #11
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Has anyone installed the Trojan T-145's in the Seneca? I have a 2016 HJ and the local solar company is pushing the 145's over the 105's? It looks like the cases are the same size so physically they should fit but is the built-in Jayco charger/conditioner up to the task of charging the 145's when they are in a discharge state?
Also looking at adding two of the Canadian Solar 285 watt panels with MidNite Solar Kid Charge controller. Does anyone have any input or advice for this setup?

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Old 01-08-2018, 09:14 PM   #12
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Originally Posted by AKMX View Post
Has anyone installed the Trojan T-145's in the Seneca? I have a 2016 HJ and the local solar company is pushing the 145's over the 105's? It looks like the cases are the same size so physically they should fit but is the built-in Jayco charger/conditioner up to the task of charging the 145's when they are in a discharge state?
Also looking at adding two of the Canadian Solar 285 watt panels with MidNite Solar Kid Charge controller. Does anyone have any input or advice for this setup?

Thanks,
Dave
The T-145 is slightly taller than the T-105, but at least in my unit it wouldn't matter. I would have the extra 3/4".

When I was shopping for my Trojans the distributor told me that the T-105's had a longer expected life than the T-145. Plus they gave me a terrific deal on the T-105's, they stock them all the time. The T-145's were special order, hence more $$. Plus I was in a hurry, getting ready for a trip when my original Harris batteries were goners!

I've never had any issues with my stock Progressive Dynamics converter/charger. And I have taken the bank down to 12.0 volts plenty of times and it brings them back up just fine.
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Old 01-08-2018, 09:15 PM   #13
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batteries

Here are the spec sheets for the smarter-than-me. Is the 20-hour rating 450AH for four six volt T-105s vs 600AH for the T-1275? There are thousands of golf carts here and some use four 12 volt Trojans. The cart shop has them both fairly priced but re-cabling for 6 volts guessing would eat up $30 or $40 off the difference.
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Old 01-08-2018, 09:34 PM   #14
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Here are the spec sheets for the smarter-than-me. Is the 20-hour rating 450AH for four six volt T-105s vs 600AH for the T-1275?
I think you are correct. With four 6-volt batteries you can't multiply capacity x 4, but only 2 since you need to series connect them in pairs to get 12-volts. But with 12-volt batteries you can multiply by 4. The 12-volts are several inches longer than the 6-volt batteries, but looking at my tray picture I think there is still plenty of room on our trays.

If you are looking to maximize electrical capacity they look good. I wonder if Trojan would divulge their expected number of charge/discharge cycles of the various batteries that have been discussed for comparison's sake? I also wonder what real world pricing for the 12-volt units would be?
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Old 01-08-2018, 10:06 PM   #15
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money

Attached is the local pricing for the aforementioned. The T-105 price is the best the internet offers, and with local availability, putting the price for four at $520 vs $820 with 25% more capacity. Figuring it is a Trojan and not a Wally-Mart clear-case dual-purpose, it probably rocks.
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Old 01-08-2018, 10:14 PM   #16
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I think my moreride batt tray is rated for 250 lbs. May be something to consider.

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Old 01-08-2018, 10:15 PM   #17
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Or would that be 33% more capacity? 33% of 450 amps is 150 for 600 total. Could be a bulletproof set-up.
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