Bus work?

[joeblack5]

The second battery hangs on the passenger side of the frame...the girardin buses have a battery box directly after the door...
The batteries are directly in parallel.
Often the second one dies earlier.. not sure why.
The early e350 had both in the front. The passenger side one was specially made for ford and expensive.

If you are diy.
The frame ones are a pain to get of. The box hangs on safety cables and you have to tilt the batteries in, make the connection and the lift it back on / over the bolts.

Good luck

[AmandaandMarky]

Where could I bring the bus to have something like that done?

[Johnny Mullet]

Where in NY are you? I am in NE Ohio near Lake Erie. I also work at a shop in NW Pennsylvania close to I-90.

[AmandaandMarky]

I’m smack in the middle, Utica, close to Syracuse if you know whereabouts that is, I wish I was a bit closer to you, if it were any other issue I’d just make the trip since we want to be traveling south anyway, but with the bus only starting with a jump it would be a risky trip lol

[jackdebear]

You want to search for a parasitic draw and fix it or you'll likely end up with 2 dead batteries instead of one. Really should not need more battery than the vehicle came with stock.

[Doktari]

I have a 1992 E350 shuttle bus with two batteries in the front. It’s just used for storage currently. I am also having phantom load problem and left a charger on each battery. I got tired of doing that so installed two 40 watt panels that were gathering dust. One for each battery. When I opened the junction box on the panels I found tiny little charge controllers inside the boxes. So that was a craigslist surprise bonus. Maybe this Summer I’ll locate the phantoms and install a cut off switch. I’ll be curious to see if the panels got the batteries through the Winter when I return. Ive read of healthy fully charged lead acid batteries being stored in a shed over winter with no damage. Perhaps that’s what I should have done. I’m no sure how healthy these batteries are so went with solar.
A DMM (digital multimeter) usually has a ampmeter rated for 10 amps. That should be plenty for phantom. As Be Nimble suggested, pull one fuse at a time until you see the culprit.

[jackdebear]

There's lots of youtube videos about how to track down a parasitic draw.