Problems with battery Charging

[robalanearly]

Hi All

We are new owners of a used 2004 and just took our first trip from S. Cal to Canada.

We have brand new batteries that seemed to be charging at the beginning of the trip, but now are not.

There seems to be hot coming from the truck and the generator isn't charging them either.

It is hard to see into the battery, but it seems to have water.

Is there something simple we are missing, since we are new owners, we are not sure if there is a switch to flip or a terminal that giggles loose, or is there a more serious problem we need to take it in and have it checked out???

Anyone have ideas of what to check next.

Dea and Rob

[H. John Kohl]

Dea and Rob,
You have asked a single question but has a lot of possible answers.
So I am going to ask some simple questions to put all of us on the sheet.
1. You say there seems to be hot coming from the truck. Where did you measure this? What make and year truck do you have.
2.You say it seemed to be charging at the beginning of the trip. How do you know, what tests did you do then and now?


1. I am assuming you are only trouble shooting charging from the truck when towing. Not when Parked at Camp grounds.
2. If you are testing 12VDC at the 7 pin plug on your truck and find it there with pin 1 - ground and 4 - 12VDC.
3. Some units may have a fuse on the wire for pin 4 under the pin box.
There is an electrical box where the cord is spliced to the trailer wiring. Some have a fuse on the "black" wire.

[robalanearly]

We are actually having trouble charging from the camp ground plugged into 110V and from the truck and from the generator.

The batteries were new in April of 2010. We can charge the batteries if we connect them directly to a battery charger, but having trouble with any other axillary charging.

Any ideas on what we should be looking for?

[firetrucker]

The batteries are charged by the converter that also supplies 12 V to everything in the rig. If you disconnect the batteries, do all the 12 V appliances work? If not, the problem is related to the converter, and that's where I'd start looking. Could be a tripped circuit breaker, loose wiring on the ac or dc sides, a blown fuse, or a bad converter.

Let us know what model you have, and someone will be able to tell you where the converter is located.

Bob