Seneca house batteries not charging

[Rustynuts]

Have a 2018.5 Seneca with issues charging house batteries. Haven’t had any issues on the last few trips but on this one the generator is not charging batteries. Belford we left I had it plugged in while loading and when I unplugged I noticed the inverter panel said 11.9 but figured the extension cord got bumped or something. Made the drive to our dry camp spot and battery was at 12.4 after being charged from the drive. Ran yesterday off inverter and this morning we were down to 11.7 so fired up the genny and ran for a couple hours and it[ never got past 11.8. Converter wizard light is flashing once per second so it tried it again putting it in manual mode...still nothing more than 11.7. Have a friends Honda and battery charger on it now with the batteries disconnected auto see if they come up. I have the PD4590K converter, anybody have a wiring diagram to test the charge output on the converter? Any body know where to start? First day of a 2 week trip

[RVermont]

Check water level first.

The Seneca chassis pumps out 14.2 amp so if you drove any distance over a couple hours you should fully charged the batteries. They should have been closer to 13. I used to see 12.9 but now 12.6 after several hours driving. The batteries are not the best to begin with. I think often the issue with these batteries comes during the time these units are sitting on the dealers lots. I have spent a few days at various dealers and you see the salesmen and tech walking around with portable battery starters due to allowing the house batteries to die. One fully discharge cycle can significantly reduce the life of the batteries.

[Rustynuts]

I swapped to 4 Trojan 105’s right off the bat. I found the test procedure for the converter on the Progressive Dynamics site and just went through the test procedure and it checks out Ok as far as input voltage to the main breaker and voltage at the low voltage side and it is 13.6 volts. Then I probed the output lines to battery (not in the test procedure and I am getting 12.4 which is about what the batteries are at now being charged but the honda and battery charger.

[jimp]

11.9 indicates an almost completely depleted (if not 100%) battery, and may have "killed" the battery in terms of accepting a full 100% charge in the future. One suggestion would be trying a Battery Minder trickle battery charger, it has brought several "dead" batteries back to life for me. I would use a separate battery charger on the battery in an attempt to save the battery before relying on the onboard charging system. JMO

[RVermont]

Those are much better batteries so I hope it is not the case that they got over discharged.

I guess I would next pull the battery wires off all the batteries and check them individually.

How long was your first drive? They should have been pretty well topped off

[Rustynuts]

Well finally found it, chalk it up again to Jayco broken screw heads! After testing the converter I discovered that the 2 wires running to the batteries was not showing a ground. With the whole bed torn apart, stated tracing wires. The ground terminated under the rear of the coach up behind the hitch. Three ground lugs were put under a #8 screw when it should have been a #14 in my opinion. Well the head had popped off and they were just hanging. There are 4-5 smaller ground lugs and one had 2 wires hanging out and all but one was loose. I temporarily put them back on under another screw till we get home.

[RVermont]

This was mine issue. . Same place. Good that you found the issue. What a pain in the .....

[Rustynuts]

Batteries are all good, charged right back up and holding fine.

[Rustynuts]

Got around to cleaning up the grounds and rats nest of wire loom under the back today. I used a Blue Sea Systems buss bar, grounded each end to frame with 4ga wire. All the wires were long enough to trim back to clean copper wire and crimped on heat shrink sealing terminals and attached to buss bar. All the extra wiring loom was balled up right behind the hitch so I unplugged everything and sorted it out and zip tied the excess up to the frame behind the fuel tank and reconnected all the plugs using dielectric grease as all the plugs were dry and a couple showed signs of corrosion already. Little cleaner looking now and won’t have any more wires falling or corroding off.

[Dgibbster]

Just bought a 2018 29xk and right out of the dealer took it camping, found coach house battery not charging with generator, also checked shore power and found only charging with chassis engine running, and low and behold broken ground bolt at chassis. Took it back to dealer the Monday after getting home and insisted on them to fix for me while i waited since just purchased and with existing condition. Seems to something for all to check, might be changing all of mine with better ground bolts

[javamon]

Rustynuts....great improvement...nice job! As soon as it quits raining, I'll be under mine checking this out. Did you fabricate your 4 gauge wires? Thanks for sharing this.

[Rustynuts]

Originally Posted by javamon

Rustynuts....great improvement...nice job! As soon as it quits raining, I'll be under mine checking this out. Did you fabricate your 4 gauge wires? Thanks for sharing this.

Well I sat under the back of the Seneca on a creeper while it was raining all day Yes I did make my own cables, in the past I always used solder on copper lugs but read about the hydraulic crimpers for about $35 on Amazon and ordered one up....they work great and makes it fast work. I have one more spot to redo that is on the passenger side, outside the frame that about 7-8 ground wires attach and they are already pretty bad looking and think these are the ones RVermont posted a picture of.

[Dgibbster]

Nice work, i will have to spend more time under mine and will be probably mount a ground bar on frame to attach cables. Fortunately where we are located not much corrosion but we hope soon to make plenty of travels so want to do a little overkill :-)

[GeorgeM]

Hey Rusty I seem to have the same problem house batteries not charging on shore power or on generator - have not tried closing things up and starting the chassis engine but I do know they are isolated.

I checked the grounds at the rear of the Seneca and they seem solid. Do you have that troubleshooting guide for the Converter?

Also so I don’t completely kill the house batteries can you tell me how you hooked up the battery charger to the house batteries?

Thanks!

[Shadowchaser]

That’s one fantastic job of troubleshooting!!!!

[GeorgeM]

Yep Rusty does some incredible troubleshooting!

[Rustynuts]

Thanks guys, here is a link to the one I used. Check all the lugs in the rear and make sure they are tight and not corroded. Doesn’t take much to lose a good ground.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lyuvkxqcfo...OTING.pdf?dl=0

[GeorgeM]

Rusty - thanks, that proved what I thought- bad converter section on the progressive dynamics now to see if somebody will give me one under warranty (just the converter section)

[Rustynuts]

What I have found on warranty items like this is sometimes its easier and faster to deal with the Manufactures warranty that to deal through Jayco. We just did this with our rear A/C unit and it was a much simpler process and was done through an independent RV repair shop that I trust and not a Jayco dealer. Independent dealers are usually much easier to work with such as ours after testing the A/C unit we were able to pick it up and keep using our coach while they waited for the new unit to show up which took 2 weeks, instead of it sitting at the dealer.

[GeorgeM]

Agreed - I have a mobile appt with camping world but they could not get to me before Wednesday, and who knows how long they could take to get the part. We return home on Friday...

From what you know on how the 12 volt works will the chassis alternator keep the batteries charged while running down the road with a bad converter? I think it should.