New Member bought 2017 Ford Transit 250 needs guidance

[rtamobile]

In my new-to-me Used 2017 Ford Transit 250, I suspect I have a standard SMB set up with a Sure Power 1314-200 battery separator under the chassis under the driver seat. Adjacent to that appears to be a fuse under a transparent plastic cover. I have two house batteries (DieHard Silver 27DC-2 with 600CCA) in parallel under the rear drivers dinette bench. The cables then come up through the floor under the passenger side rear dinette bench. There is found an ME Battery Monitor kit, the 12V Master Switch, a large fuse. The cables flow into the ME inverter. Coming out are cables for the Network, Remote and Battery Temp Sensor. I do not see an ACR Blue Sea 7620 as you described above.



I have a 12V fridge and water pump. Just below the breaker box and the ME remote panel cabinet is a GFI and there four 110 outlets through out. I have a small electric Rheem water heater that I was told only works when plugged into shore power and a A/C in the ceiling.



I would post photos buy haven't figured out how yet.



My original question was - does my van battery charge when driving? If so, do I need to take any action to make this happen. Another question would be do I need to go into the ME panel and confirm the default settings are correct?



Thanks.

[Scalf77]

Kind of surprised that a 2017 came with a Surepower 1314-200. But that would be the unit to the charging while driving. It is similar in operation to the Blue Sea 7620, but with a major difference. The 1314-200 is unidirectional, where as the the BS 7620 or Surepower 1315-200 are bidirectional.

This means that the cable attachment is very important as one terminal is for the starting battery and one is for the house battery bank.


To test this you can use the Magnum remote just make sure that ii is displaying voltage, the BMK should display the voltage level of your house batteries. Try hitting the meter button, you may need to scroll with the knob. You can the use one of the plugin voltage readers in one of the van 12 volt plugs. Obviously you can use any kind of Digital multimeter if you are comfortable with that also.

As seen in the above diagram there are three Tab connectors on the 1314-200, the one on the bottom should go to ground, it is possible but not probable that SMB also put a fuse on this line. The other tab is called the start signal, if this is connected it will for almost always have a fuse on it. It should go to the ignition signal ( being this is a 2017 Transit , a six pin plug under the seat)

So there are a couple of things that could be wrong if your not getting a charge when the van is running. The first is that the cables are wired backwards , the one coming from the transit CCP (should be on the drivers seat side) if you have one. If not they attached it to the bus. The aux terminal should go to the house battery (most likely indirectly). If it was wired this way then it wouldn't work correctly. This could also be tested by turning on the magnum charger, when plugged in. The voltage would track between the house and start batteries. The BMK current meter would aslo show a positive charge. Again the Surepower is pretty noisy when it connects. Are saying the Surepower is under the driver seat, or attached to the chassis under the driver seat?

It is possible that they are using the start signal to close the 1314-200 when the van is running, it wouldn't be preferred, but possible. so you could check the cable going to the start signal if there, and the fuse if there is one.

At some point you are probably going to need a multimeter and measure the voltage right at the terminals of the 1314-200.

-greg

[joelm]

A few thoughts, first, have you tried calling Sportsmobile? If it was outfitted in Texas or Indiana they might be able to tell you how it was configured.

If you have the Magnum inverter, press the 'Meters' button and then spin the wheel. There is lots of very useful info:
#2 -> SOC which is supposed to show State of Charge. I find it doesn't always track properly, but in general very useful.

#3 -> Meters You can seem Amp Hours in/out and current draw etc.

[CJ]

Check your surepower, they do mak a bit directional

I have a surepower in my 07 smb and you can hear it click on when it starts charging the house bats. Normally just after it's started. Just depends on state of charge. I rarely plug in and I drive it every couple of days....charge is always maintained

[rtamobile]

After taking the time to learn how to upload photos, here are some photos of the van battery, the battery separator (sure power 1314-200) and adjacent fuse, the house batteries in parallel, the cables coming up through the floor to the Master 12V cutoff switch, the fuse, the BMK, and the back of the ME Inverter


Rich

[Scalf77]

As i said before at some point and time you need to get a meter on the SP 1314-200.

It would be nice if you could identify what cable is what. I do see the cable come from the MIDI fuse block to the main terminal on the Sure Power 1314, I suspect that the other side of the fuse block ends up going to the bus bar under the drivers seat. I just can't confirm with the pictures.

The other thing to check would be the ground connection. You can see the screw that they put into the body, doesn't even looked like they cleaned it off. If the ground is loose the SurePower unit will not work.

I would check or have someone check the voltage on the two terminals. You should see the two battery voltages on those terminals. The main-start battery and then the aux or house battery. Again when you start the van the main-start terminal should go up above 13.2 volts, and that should make the relay close and start charging the house battery.

Being that you suspect it is not charging, I would assume that it is not working, but you need to confirm. If there is no voltage of the main-start terminal then I would check the fuse (in the plastic fuse box). Being that they have the start assist hooked up, I suspect that is the other ATC fuse holder, it then goes and follows the battery wire through the floor and under the seat, most likely that goes to pin 6 on the vehicle interface connector.



I would suspect the larger fuse or the ground connection, at this point. But you really need to have it metered out.

-greg

[Scalf77]

Once you have this issue taken care of, a couple of other things to look at.

House batteries wired wrong, I suspect that this was dome when new batteries were installed. In any case one of the prescribed methods for wiring batteries in parallel is to have the ground on one end of the bank and the positive on the other end of the bank. Hopefully you can remove the positive cable and it will fit through the access hole and you can attach to the other battery. This distributes the load and charging batter.



I would check to see where the start assist wire is coming from. It appears to follow the cable from SurePower to the starting battery. I would suspect that they may be going to the ignition pin on the vehicle interface connector.

"Ignition
Pin 6 - Ignition signal is protected by a 10A fuse.
It is +12V active at ignition positions: Accessory
(1) and Run (2). It is not active at Ignition OFF (0)
or Crank (3). Whilst it can drive equipment directly
it is recommended to use this feed to control a
converter fitted relay, especially for high current
applications."

If so that would be wrong. As you can see from the Ford BEMM it would be HOT +12 Active when the key was in accessory or run, but not when the engine is cranking or starting.

Sportsmobile has a history of getting this input wrong, so it would be worth checking out. There are really no pins on the vehicle interface connector that support the start assist feature. You could test this feature, by checking with a meter, if it is HOT +12 active when the vehicle is running, I would pull the fuse.

Why that matters

It is very possible that the start assist feature will override the built in voltage monitoring of the Surepower unit, If the alternator was to fail to keep up with load on the house side, it would not be able to disconnect as designed if the voltage was dropping.


The larger fuse feeding the Surepower main terminal is actually in a brain dead position. The fuse is most like to large to protect the Surepower unit. I am not opposed to fusing from the start battery, but why not do it closer to the actually power source. Even more specifically, before you put it through a metal floor. For that matter, I would have just put the Surepower under the seat.

To protect the surepower from becoming a flame thrower if something goes wrong it is recommended to put a 10 amp fuse on the ground terminal connection. Any fusing on the larger battery inputs would be to large to protect the voltage monitoring module.

-greg

[rtamobile]

Thank you Greg. You would be a great neighbor.



Rich

[BrianW]

My SurePower (2011 E350 SMB North build) had no fuse on the unit. Per Greg’s suggestion I added one to the negative wire. The start assist wire came from under the van, wired into the starter itself so that every time the van was started the house batteries were connected [emoji15] I removed that and just added a switch back by the SurePower to the start assist terminal, with the idea that if my starting battery is dead I’ll just go back and flip the switch temporarily to feed the house battery power back to the start battery. I was going to install a momentary switch on the dash, but this was easier.

[bigriver]

Originally Posted by rtamobile

Thank you Greg. You would be a great neighbor.



Rich

He is......