wamcneil

And when you remove the shaft, make sure make it doesn’t leave an old o-ring way down in there where it’s hard to see… I learned that two o-rings are not better than one and would up rebuilding mine twice. 
Also, a new screw is very tight in a new shaft and doesn’t cut new threads easily. Mine broke and I wound up re-using the original screw. 

I had problems with the HEIC files several years ago when Apple made the switch, but not recently. At that time Microsoft had a HEIC decoder that could be added to windows through the Microsoft App Store. 
Android 10 should deal with HEIC natively https://www.androidpolice.com/heic-files-open-android/

Maybe need to update Android if the HEIC files are still a problem?

Eek. 40ftlb sounds like a lot of torque. I didn’t attempt to put a torque wrench on mine. 

It’s not a fun job. I would up rebuilding mine twice because I didn’t check real good and left an old o-ring stuck down in the bore. Working with my head right up against the slobber tube. Took a lot of washing to get all the nasty black oil out of my hair. Ugh

Have you tried our parts list? I’d bet it’s in there. 

W

23 hours ago, dennis.mcdonaugh said:

Anyone have any idea how much fluid I’m likely to lose changing out that valve?  

Not the same engine (isl), but I drained about 4 gal when rebuilding my coolant filter valve

On 3/25/2024 at 6:10 PM, dennis.mcdonaugh said:

I've been running Peak OAT coolant in the coach since about 2008 and continue to run regular coolant, Prestone this time, in the generator. Carrying the left over quart of Prestone antifreeze doesn't seem as big a deal as the procedure you have to go through to change to OAT coolant in the generator.

The “procedure” is basically drain and refill. My OCD requires a flush with distilled water also, but Cummins say’s that is not necessary. 
You asked what everyone else is doing… and I think a lot of us use an extended life HD coolant that is much better than what is spec’d for the generator, and then pretty much never change it again. 
If you want to continue to use conventional coolant, probably best to follow the maintenance schedule for conventional coolant. 
W

On 3/18/2024 at 12:57 PM, 96 EVO said:

I would probably start with shocks / shock mounts.

My clunking was broken off upper shock mount stud. 

There seems to be a misconception that any "float" stage will continuously force current through the battery. That's not the case with lifepo4.

As long as 'float' voltage is at or below the resting voltage of the battery, it'll just hold that state of charge and current through the battery will be zero. 

2 minutes ago, Grey Goose said:

Understood, I assume this was for lead acid battery chemistry and I was not sure if it did the same for what ever battery type you have yours set at. I assume you are using custom or CC/CV?

As I recall, magnum disables temp compensation ONLY in the lithium profile and there is no option to disable it in custom settings or any other charge profile. I think I called tech support to confirm that. Been a few years…
Yes. I’m using custom settings that are a form of cc/cv. I have significant voltage drop in my ridiculously long cables, so my settings are partially to work around that limitation

8 minutes ago, Grey Goose said:

By "crank up" do you mean exceed the settings ?

Yes. Temperature compensation works by raising the voltage by some small amount per degree below 70deg F. That will crank the voltage ABOVE your set point . Lead acid batteries will tolerate higher charge voltage when cold.

I discovered this one cold morning after fixing my long-time nonfunctional temp sensor. 

44 minutes ago, Grey Goose said:

…Assumption is this second stage would maintain charge to offset a load on system and or time out and stop charging at a certain period of time if there is no load. But either scenario would prevent the battery from being overcharged.  Of course it depends on how the user sets the parameters  for the second stage/float voltages and will vary depending the manufacturer of the LifePO battery.

My main point is that "float" may be configurable based on the battery chemistry/charger and not necessarily taboo as far as LifePo is concerned. 

When docked, I actually don’t use the magnum  “lithium” profile for this reason (mainly…). I have the float voltage set to maintain about 50% and once the battery voltage falls to that point, the charger supplies whatever the load is. 
Lifepo4 cells have a maximum voltage of something like 14.6v (3.65 x4). So if the voltage set point is lower than 14.6v, the battery won’t be overcharged. The battery will last longer if not held at a high voltage, but float voltage cannot drive current through the battery if the battery resting voltage is at or below float voltage. 
Something important that I forgot to mention earlier…. The battery temp compensation should be turned off, or if it can’t be turned off (ie- magnum charger), then unplug the temp sensor. Otherwise in cold temperatures it will crank up the voltage set points.

Float is a voltage set point. 
If float voltage is higher than the resting voltage of the battery, a current will be induced. This is the case with a lead acid battery. 
If float voltage is lower than the battery resting voltage there will be no current. That’s what happens with a lithium battery. 
The lithium chemistry doesn’t need to be float charged, and the battery lifespan will be shorter if continuously held at 100%. That’s why a lithium charge profile will end without holding a float voltage. 

Tom: do you have a lithium battery??? Just wondering if you have skin in the game 

2 hours ago, PTTech said:

Can I ask why you replaced the Xantrex? Do you know if

the same issues apply to charging lithium with the Xantrex as the Magnum?

Something went haywire with the xantrex built in AGS. Every time I would start the generator, the AGS would shut it back down. That was the primary motivation. Thought that might be a sign of bigger failures in the future. Plus I wanted true sine. Did lithium and solar shortly after replacing the inverter. 
I never really looked into how customizable the xantrex charger is

2 hours ago, Grey Goose said:

I did not realize that the Magnum products had such a bad reputation. 

I do know they make a remote that supports a lithium profile as well as custom settings to set up specific CC/CV to match your batteries.

Magnum also makes a BMK (monitoring kit) which is must if you want to get the most out of a lithium battery bank. Not a must if you are not a high demand user and spend most of your time with FHU.

As you already know I have a 2007 vintage Magnum inverter with a late release remote. 

As far as defaulting to 14V that should not bother my Lithium batteries as they are supposed to charge at 14+ and have a BMS that will stop over charging. As far as I know most Lithium batteries are similar is this regard.

I have considered getting a Magnum BMK kit but I am on the fence about spending more money on Magnum products because I know utlimately I will end up with Victron seeing how they have more control/monitoring and charging products available that seem to be more future proof than Magnum.  I am guessing all are made in China these days anyway. I do question Victrons factory support as I hear they push it all down to their retailers.

Do you still run your Magnum or did you upgrade/change to something else?

Another feature that some of the late model Victron Inverters have is a hybrid mode (Power Assst) it basically allows the inverter to draw power from the battery bank if the shore power is not enough. So if you were plugged into 20 amp and needed a bit more it would make up the difference. I am sure there is a limit but if it worked well it would be good for short periods of time and hypothetically could provide a more stable 110 voltage in those situations that were pushing or exceeding 20 amps. Of course Magnum has a similar feature as well.

Magnum has a very good reputation. I think he means that if you had a really old Magnum, it would probably be better to upgrade the inverter.

As long as you have the capability to manually set all of the charging voltages, you don't need any charging profiles labeled "lithium". 

I replaced the original 2003 xantrex with magnum ms2012 3-4 years ago. This was very close to being a direct replacement for the xantrex, with just slight modification to the mounting and wiring. For me, that was the 80/20 solution. In terms of internet-connected features, Magnum is pretty archaic, but it gets the job done.

Sure, I would love to have a flagship victron hybrid system. It's undeniably cool, totally integrated and has lots and lots of features that magnum doesn't have. But I'm just not willing to go to the trouble and expense it takes to really benefit from all of those features. If I ever do make another big change to my system, it'll be 24v (or maybe even 36v/48v), that's for sure. It's just silly to try and deal with 3kw@12v.

9 hours ago, John C said:

    you can setup the DC to DC charger (from Bluetooth) at certain voltage point (say 14v or so) to allow the DC to DC charger to kick in, since the Chassis battery voltage will be higher when the engine is running, it will charge the Lithium battery).

When the engine is not running, the chassis battery voltage will be low. DC to DC Charger won't charger the Lithium battery, that way it will never drain the chassis battery.

...

    you can setup the DC to DC charger (from Bluetooth) at certain voltage point (say 14v or so) to STOP the DC to DC charger to kick in, since the Chassis battery voltage will be higher when the engine is running, it won't charge the chassis battery when the engine is running.

When the engine is not running, the chassis battery voltage low than preset value (say 14v). DC to DC Charger will charge the chassis battery from Lithium battery bank.

 

IMO that's a compelling reason to upgrade to the bluetooth version of the DC-DC converter. I didn't think about that before I got the plain version and the only setting is output voltage. It would be really nice to set cut-in and cut-out voltages.

no. It's just a plain Victron Orion-TR DC-DC 18AMP ORI121222110. I figured that in this application I wouldn't be interested in any of the bluetooth features. Output voltage is just set with a potentiometer

1 hour ago, Tom Cherry said:

...

House - Replace the Magnum.  One detail was …you will need a Dual 30 IN & Dual 30 OUT. Then the wiring will be simple. You will still have the same internal inverter capacity and no mods anywhere. Four AC line moved and new DC 4/0 cabling from the New Inverter, presumably Victron, to the Lithium bank.the recommendation is a 3000 Watt unit. Basically a clone of the existing inverter/charger.

...

What's the motivation to replace the inverter? Surely victron doesn't have multiple on-board chargers to maintian house and chassis separately?

It's been a couple years since I've shopped for an inverter, but at that time, magnum and xantrex were the only vendors that I could find with dual-in/dual-out.

23 minutes ago, Grey Goose said:

3. A small battery maintainer plugged into 110/charges when on shore power - the logic of using the block heater works if you remember to flip the switch otherwise a smart charger wired to a 110 source permanently would maintain the chassis batteries whenever the alternator is not running.

That was my first approach before installing a dc-dc converter. In general, I like this approach, but I wound up replacing it with a dc-dc converter.

My first attempt was to upgrade the small "smart" battery charger I keep in the garage and use that old noco "smart" battery charger zip-tied overhead and plugged into the block heater port to maintain the chassis battery. 

That "smart" battery charger would periodically get confused and decide the chassis batteries were bad and shut down. And of course I wouldn't discover this till the battery was dead... So I replaced it with a bigger fixed-mount 10a noco "smart" charger, which worked better, but every now and then would get confused and shut down... and the battery would go dead again...

If you're going to do this... don't use a noco "smart" charger. Maybe it's just my luck. I don't know. Hopefully the victron chargers won't be like that. The victron dc-dc converter doesn't try and outsmart me and it just supplies the voltage that I tell it to and that's all it needs to do. 

One problem with this setup is what happens if the chassis battery goes dead. That block heater outlet is controlled by a relay, that is powered by the chassis battery. So if your chassis battery is dead you can't use the charger to charge it...

Sure. You could use two dc-dc converters. That’s not much different from the two battery isolators originally on my dynasty. 
Might need to have a switch on them so only the one that you need is active 

Not me unfortunately... had a work meeting conflict...

11 hours ago, tmw188 said:

Fleet School is having a live online seminar on Coolants coming up 2/21 this week.

I'm registered, thanks!

21 minutes ago, dennis.mcdonaugh said:

I’ve been running Final Charge in my coach since around 2008 .... 

If I ever need to drain my cooling system again, I might do that also. It bothers me to have coolant that can't be obtained at walmart or auto parts stores.

4 hours ago, Gary Petersen said:

I see the two Solenoids off to the right side. As I was pushing the wires aside to get a …good photo of their terminals, my finger touched the metal  cases. Particularly the Solenoid farthest to the right was so hot that I can NOT keep skin contact.  Is that to be expected??  

Gary 

 

 

Yes. The coils in those continuous solenoids consume about 750ma each. They will be warm/hot. 
If you bypass the salesman switch you’ll want to disconnect the coils so they’re not continuously wasting battery power. 

Mine had two salesman solenoids. One latching solenoid that fed one branch of the loads, and also triggered an automotive solenoid for the other load branch. 
Maybe the regular solenoid failed?

If you replace(d) the halogen lights with LED, the remaining loads can be combined on the latching solenoid and just remove the normal solenoid. 
Cheers

Walter