4 Curious Georges' 2001 Saf-T-Liner

[david.dgeorge07]

Steep out here!

[david.dgeorge07]

Well, the bus has been all over the country and back with my family and dogs and the adventure continues as I'm traveling and recording a podcast about the film industry in the US by visiting the major production towns and interviewing people that I know who work there.

My house battery system was never great, and it has gone from not great to basically unusable, so I'm working on an upgrade and for those of you who remember my thread or who are getting ready to work on battery stuff I figured I would add a few posts on the topic.

The goals of my upgrade are these:

1. Add more storage so I can keep the power on for longer as I'm doing recordings
2. Allow for easier isolation/selection of house batteries vs. starting batteries - I currently have a system that always charges all batteries whenever one of the two things is happening
a) the bus is running
b) shore power is plugged in.
In theory this is great, but I think it is hard on the batteries because my house batteries were AGM, and the starter batteries are conventional flooded batteries.
3. I wired the system with 2 AWG wire, and haven't had problems, but with the possible amp draw it seemed smart to upgrade it.
4. I am adding an amp/amp hour meter so I can more accurately judge my state of charge and track battery health.

I'll post more details in the next post. Feel free to chime in with questions or comments.

[david.dgeorge07]

First order of business was to remove, test and water the starting batteries. They were filthy so I pressure washed them, being careful not to contaminate the electrolyte.

Both had enough water to cover the plates on all cells, but were well below the “meniscus” level so I added distilled water to all 12 cells up to the meniscus level.

Both tested “good” at Walmart, delivering between 800 and 950 CCAs each.

I’ve put them on the trickle charger while tending to the rest of things.

I had a lot of stuff to clean up. The battery tray was completely jammed and immobile, but with enough lube and tapping with a hammer it freed up.

Cleaned all the terminals, pressure washed the tray, dried and vacuumed everything out and applied fluid film to everything. Really not a lot of rust, but it wouldn’t have hurt to have done the whole oshpo and re-paint thing. Hopefully the fluid film will help keep things on order for now though.

You can see surface rust and primer on the tray, but everything is under fluid film now.



Yesterday after much research and deliberation I purchased 3x group 27 size Duracell Ultra AGM platinum batteries for my new house batteries. They are rated for 92 AH and have a good warranty from Batteries+. I am currently testing them for uniformity with a 7 amp load, discharging down to about 11.5 V for the tests.

Will share results when testing is done. It takes quite a while!

[consti2tion]

You should look into a desulfator battery charger for your starting batteries. I know a lot of people have their opinions or facts about charging the house batteries with the alternator but I personally feel like it is better to keep them up to some degree with the alternator and then charge them with a good smart charger while parked. I put a 55 amp charger on my 3 gel 102 amp hour batteries for shore charging and put an isolator on the 2/0 wire running from the start batteries to the house batteries. Hoping that will suffice. Let us know what kind of amp hour monitor you get and how well it works. Sounds like you are on the right path.

[david.dgeorge07]

Originally Posted by consti2tion

You should look into a desulfator battery charger for your starting batteries. I know a lot of people have their opinions or facts about charging the house batteries with the alternator but I personally feel like it is better to keep them up to some degree with the alternator and then charge them with a good smart charger while parked. I put a 55 amp charger on my 3 gel 102 amp hour batteries for shore charging and put an isolator on the 2/0 wire running from the start batteries to the house batteries. Hoping that will suffice. Let us know what kind of amp hour monitor you get and how well it works. Sounds like you are on the right path.

My AIMS inverter/charger has a de-sulphation mode, but I haven’t tried it yet. Your batteries are gel? Not AGM? I didn’t think those were common anymore. Can you educate us?

What isolator do you have? I have a similar system, but the largest isolator I could find was only 140 amps, which seems marginal, although I haven’t had any trouble with it. Thinking of deleting it from the system in favor of a marine style battery selector.

As far as charging from an alternator, the main worry would be that your float voltage might be high. Bulk should be fine. I’m thinking about charging separately and using the marine style selector switch to allow the inverter and 12v house system to run off the alternator while driving.

[consti2tion]

The only reason I have Gel batteries over AGM is because the price ( free ) was right. I’m a technician for a company that has remote telemetry on pipeline systems and we upgraded a couple of sites to have primary AC power, they replaced the year old batteries on what is now the solar back up ( the sites were solar only prior to upgrade ) Long story short they were going to just send them to the recycle and I offered to do the leg work and get rid of them for the other technician. I know they have a better recovery from slow discharge, that’s about the only benefit to them.

The isolator I have is a battery doctor by wirthco. It’s only 125 amp so less than yours.

With the floating voltage is there any way to put a voltage regulator before the house battery bank? Forgive my ignorance on the issue.

[david.dgeorge07]

We’re all learning here! I was just guessing based on what most deep cycle batteries spec for float charge and what the digital display on my dashboard gives me. Unless there is a significant load, my automotive system sits at 14.2 volts which is a safe charge voltage for all 12 volt lead acid type batteries that I am aware of.

However.

All of the AGM/deep cycle batts that I have owned or researched like to float in the mid-thirteen range after the bulk and absorption phases are done. Since my alternator often sits at 14.2 that is .7 or so too much. I read somewhere in my research that AGM batts are more sensitive to excessive voltage after charging is complete and that they can be permanently damaged from it. (Flooded batts are not bothered by this small amount of extra voltage) If your house batteries have been fully charged and are just chilling (float charging) and you go on a long drive with the alternator connected it probably sizzles them some. That may be mitigated some if you are also powering an inverter or something from them that may absorb some of the current.

I feel like there is a regulator that you can turn dumb charging onto smart charging but I have no knowledge.

BTW my shunt based amp/ amp/hr meter came in. So far it is really helpful. Just testing at this point but seems like pretty much what I was looking for.

On another note, the company I bought my 100AH battery from is not wanting to honor the 1 year warranty. They asked me to trickle charge for 24 hours which I have done several times.

When I started it would yield 7 amps for about 10 minutes. After several cycles it will now run for about 80 minutes with the same load.

Unfortunately if you’re doing the math you already know that that is only about 10 or so amp hours or 10% of it’s rated 100 amp hour capacity.

They want me now to prove it is bad with a printout from a battery tester. I had Walmart test it and it actually passed the cold cranking amps test. I had already left the store before I realized that was the wrong test to show deep cycle issues.

The moral I took from the story is that dealing with internet sellers for big heavy batteries is maybe not the best. Also, a trickle charger and some slow charge/discharge cycles really can breath at least some life back into a nearly completely useless battery.

[david.dgeorge07]

Got a lot done yesterday, and got the new batteries in. In an effort to save some money, I chose to double the 2awg welding wire rather than replacing it with 2/0.

If you choose to do the same thing, remember just how many cables you will have to terminate and how many lugs will have to stack on various terminals. It was a bear of a job, and I’m still not done, but I have a safe, working system.

[david.dgeorge07]

Got the panel for my amp/watt meter installed tonight. Still trying to figure out if I can put the shunt on + vs - side so I can account for the little bit of lighting and stuff that is grounding thru the body.

[david.dgeorge07]

Basically finished the battery upgrade today.

Lots of soldering/terminating cables. There is a learning curve here which I think I'm finally mostly past. If you're just starting make sure to test your terminals for a good solid bond that isn't called into question when the cable twists or bends. Mostly it is just about getting flux where it needs to go, getting enough heat, and making sure you don't skimp on the solder.

Another part of the job that I completed was modifying my battery box to hold 4 group 27 batts vs. three. I recently purchased 3 new batteries as part of this upgrade, but hope to add a 4th very shortly. I used my old AGM batt just to help me get the fit right.

The amp/voltage/wattage meter is up and running. It is really nice to be able to see how many amps and watts you are using in real time, as well as like a fuel gauge. It isn't perfect and I wish that everything grounded in one places so there were no stray electrons being allowed to bypass, but everything that grounds through the body is such a tiny load compared to what runs through the inverter so I don't think it is too big a deal. I went for the 500 amp shunt. I was thinking that in case there were momentary surges this would help prevent overload, and I could accurately monitor any spikes. In hindsight I should have gotten the 2 or 300 amp one. It's fine, but I think the numbers would probably be more stable if the load was not such a small percentage of the full capacity.

The hardest part of installing the meter was running new wires now that the bus is all put together. It wasn't terrible, but if you're in the construction phase, go ahead and wire for stuff like this and it will be a snap if/when you decide to put it in.

My marine style selector switch is in and working really well. Now that I have an amp gauge I feel a lot more confident in pulling loads directly from the alternator.

Although I don't know for sure, previous research suggests that my alternator is probably 160-200 amps. That makes me feel pretty ok about putting an 80-90 amp load on it (which happens to be what one mini-split unit running flat out uses). I can also use the alternator for some bulk charging of my house batteries if they are pretty low, but easily isolate them from the alternator if they are charged and I don't want the excessive float voltage.

My math suggests that I should be able to run one mini-split unit for 90 minutes or so at max capacity without using more than about 50% of my battery capacity. As I understand it you can cycle AGM/Lead Acid batteries to 50% with relatively little impact on their overall longevity. Most of my podcast interviews are about 90 minutes long, so I'm hoping that I can run my mini-splits for the duration without having to use the generator or shore power and still keep it comfy in the bus.

I don't know why these photos rotated. They were correct in the OS. Anyway...

Photo 1: Enlarged Battery Compartment
Photo 2: Inverter/Charger re-installed with battery bank selector switch and lots of #2 wires!
Photo 3: Inverter remote panel showing 42% load (approx 1000 watts) from a mini-spit unit in heater mode.
Photo 4: Shunt (500 amp) before wiring it in to the negative feed. The pass through bolts made attaching 2 #2 wires easy because the terminals could go top/bottom.
Photo 5: Meter with mini-split running. 72amps 11.41 volts. Can also display watts and amp/hours.

[joeblack5]

I use one of those on my electric forklift.
Not sure I understand... quote

The amp/voltage/wattage meter is up and running. It is really nice to be able to see how many amps and watts you are using in real time, as well as like a fuel gauge. It isn't perfect and I wish that everything grounded in one places so there were no stray electrons being allowed to bypass, but everything that grounds through the body is such a tiny load compared to what runs through the inverter so I don't think it is too big a deal.


If your shunt is directly connected to the battery neg then how could you miss electrons?



Later J

[david.dgeorge07]

Originally Posted by joeblack5

I use one of those on my electric forklift.
Not sure I understand... quote

The amp/voltage/wattage meter is up and running. It is really nice to be able to see how many amps and watts you are using in real time, as well as like a fuel gauge. It isn't perfect and I wish that everything grounded in one places so there were no stray electrons being allowed to bypass, but everything that grounds through the body is such a tiny load compared to what runs through the inverter so I don't think it is too big a deal.


If your shunt is directly connected to the battery neg then how could you miss electrons?



Later J

That’s a good question, and maybe I don’t fully understand, but I’ve got two battery banks: house and starter. The house batts ground to the starter batts, and I have some LED lights that ground to the body. I can power them with either battery bank.

The shunt is connected between my house battery bank negative and my inverter.

In practice I do seem to register the load from the lights as long as my inverter is turned on (registers as charge current), but with it off it disappears from the meter. The lights are grounding by coming up the negative cable from the starter batts instead of going thru my shunt.

Hmmm.

Now that I think about it I don’t know why I couldn’t ground the inverter and the starter batts to one end of the shunt and ground the house bank to the other end. It should function the same as far as the circuit, but all electrons to the house bank would have to pass through the shunt.

Am I missing something? Not sure why I didn’t think of this before.

[joeblack5]

If you ground your house battery via the shunt then you should be OK. In that case also the alternator charge current should register , at least as your battery selector switch is turned to both (parallel) batteries.

[budbud7]

Originally Posted by david.dgeorge07

Attachment 21986

Time to do final install of stove. After looking at the design I didn’t like the idea of it backing up to plywood so I skinned the wall with sheet metal.

Attachment 21987

I also installed the anti tip bracket that came with it.

Attachment 21988

I reconnected the gas line and repeated the bubble test.

Attachment 21989

Only thing lacking now is a floor plate to hold it firmly in position.

Attachment 21990

Got started on building a dog crate that will be elevated on the wheel well.

Attachment 21991

The picture of your gas line looks to be copper tubing. I think copper tubing has been outlawed piping for gas appliances. The problem was it flaking off inside and causing problems with the gas valves. Anyway it worth checking out.

[david.dgeorge07]

Originally Posted by budbud7

The picture of your gas line looks to be copper tubing. I think copper tubing has been outlawed piping for gas appliances. The problem was it flaking off inside and causing problems with the gas valves. Anyway it worth checking out.

It looks like that is true in some areas where hydrogen sulfide is at a high-level and the local natural gas supply.

As far as I can tell this does not apply to propane installations. As far as I can tell threaded black pipe and flared copper are common practice for propane. The entire system came from a 2015 model year travel trailer and I pretty much just removed it from the trailer and reinstalled it in my bus.

None of that means but I will never have problems though. I do have an onboard propane detector and have gone over the system carefully to make sure that it is leak free, but with the amount of vibration a system like this sees it can’t hurt to do periodic inspections.

Thanks for the heads up.

[david.dgeorge07]

Just received the hose to re-plumb my driver’s heat. Anyone got advice on routing up the frame from the rear engine? How often do the supports need to be do you think? Or should it lie on the channel of the frame?

[Tango]

Tuck it in & tie it down.

[BlackJohn]

Are you planning on insulating the hoses? 2 longish runs ? What size hose David?



I would be building in some mechanical protection as well the whole length along with insulating the hoses.


John

[Jolly Roger bus 223]

Originally Posted by BlackJohn

Are you planning on insulating the hoses? 2 longish runs ? What size hose David?



I would be building in some mechanical protection as well the whole length along with insulating the hoses.


John

It doesn't get as cold down here as it does up there john but if I lived where you did I would also be thinking of insulation. But more on me than heater hoses?
But that kinda falls inline with what I was going to say and can be a good preventive measure solution to the problem I was getting ready to bring up?.
A rubber line is tough to support properly and keep the sags and bellies out of it?
And everywhere it is supported is a potential rub point due to vehicle vibration and expansion contraction of the tubing/piping as it heats up and cools down.
The correct clamp to hold it tight when cold is to tight when warm the correct clamp when warm is to big when the line is cold?
But even the correct size clamp to hold the tubing is a rub point that could/can/ will eventually rub through.
Laying it in the rail is an option and johns idea of insulating it and using clamps that fit the insulation will allow it to expand and contract and protect it because of the insulation. Rubber/rubatex/pool noodles that fit your tubing.
But if were me? And for where I intend to be? I personally would run a PVC sleeve the entire length,. Clean/ream the inside ends.secure that and run the rubber inside of that and/or turn a fitting up or down as needed on each end.
And if you are interested and have the room? Research the heat trap idea in piping. You will mostly find it in domestic cold water to heater systems but I also know from oldish school commercial piping experience that it is used in some of the building heating that I work on instead of control valves?
It traps the heat going forward out of the heat source to force the heat rises theory up to the heater and in the return line it traps it from returning to fast to regain the heat from the water that has already passed the exchanger. Which means the heat source doesn't have to work as hard to maintain temps.
Sorry work knowledge? That I would look into if had to deal with David's question.
Normal practice to do it? How can I do it better? How can I do it and make it last the life of my build?
I go the make it last the life route?
I personally would run copper or steel pipe in the frame from A to B.
mitchel

[david.dgeorge07]

Originally Posted by BlackJohn

Are you planning on insulating the hoses? 2 longish runs ? What size hose David?



I would be building in some mechanical protection as well the whole length along with insulating the hoses.


John

It is 1” ID Gates “Safety Stripe” heater hose.

I spent quite a while tonight figuring out how to route it. Will not fit on the frame rail as I hoped because of crossmembers and other obstructions, but I found a pretty clear path just up under the floor “joists”.

75’ of hose proved to be the right amount, I should have just a few feet extra.