House Battery Problems

Scalf77 · 08-11-2007, 04:04 PM

Last week I noticed that the house battery was struggling to make it overnight. I did not even have enough juice to run my coffee pot with the inverter in the morning. The battery is about 3 ½ years old. I have been pretty good with my usage, and was expecting more. Well as I investigated and pulled down the battery, I was quite alarmed to find the batter cable worn and shorted to the frame. I have repaired the cable and put it all back together, I ran the battery cable through some flexible conduit in the wear area and routed the cables so they don't touch the frame in that area. This just adds to my list of wiring problems.

Greg

Ford_6L_E350 · 08-11-2007, 05:02 PM

I'm assuming that was an SMB installed battery.

How old is the van? Where was the aux battery located?

jage · 08-11-2007, 07:00 PM

You can put a bit of cut to lenght heater hose over the wire if you want to have some better life than the cheap plastic automotive conduit.

How many miles on the van? (e.g. the wiring)

Scalf77 · 08-11-2007, 07:48 PM

The van is a 2004 E350 EB. I have around 27,000 miles on it. It was a Sportsmobile install. (4D) Battery installed on the passenger side, under the side door. I put some home electrical flexible conduit around it already. Yes, as you can see the automotive stuff they used didn't do much in the way of helping.

Ford_6L_E350 · 08-12-2007, 01:54 PM

That is really scary!! It looks like it wasn't quite a complete short, or you may have had a battery explosion or fire.

If I had a 4D battery mounted there, I would check the wiring on my van.

I'm glad you found the problem before you had serious issues.

Mike

Buji · 08-12-2007, 04:15 PM

I'm guessing you have a gas van, not diesel, right? The diesels have the van batteries on the passenger side under the cargo doors. My AGMs are in the middle in front of the extended storage. Still, a regular crawl under the van is on my list of regular checklist items.

-B

Scalf77 · 08-14-2007, 01:02 AM

Yes, it is a V10 van. Unfortunately I could not see the problem until I took the battery down. The symptoms I had were twice in the last couple of months, my charger kicked off while plugged in at home. After resetting things, everything would start working again. The biggest clue other then the battery going south was when I was checking things out and moving about the van, I would see the volt meter (cheap plug in one that comes with SMB) fluctuate a full volt. That was when the fridge was not running. I am just happy nothing went boom. I'll be ordering the Xantrex XBM, and install it with the new battery.
I would recommend looking over all of the wiring, plumbing and such on your new rig. Just so you get an understanding of how things work, plus you may find some things that you might want to tidy up a bit.

-greg.

Scalf77 · 08-27-2007, 10:25 PM

I finished replacing the battery and installing a Xantrex Battery Monitor this weekend. While I was in the process of doing all that I figured out what the real culprit of my cable being worn was. I realized that the real problem was a broke tie wrap that holds the battery in the tray (at least on my install). I really couldn't understand why the battery cable got so worn down, it was a tight fit but it was really sharp or anything. Anyhow when I was tie wrapping the new battery in place I remembered the one was broken when I took that old battery down. So if your battery is held in the same way, you might want to add that to your monthly inspection. (I also upgraded to some heavier tie wraps).

-Greg

Jeffrey · 08-27-2007, 10:43 PM

Tie wraps to hold in a battery? What happened to the clamp with nuts and bolts?

jstanley · 11-30-2010, 04:13 PM

My respect for SMB went WAY down when I saw the zip ties to hold the battery down,