wamcneil

Your manual doesn't have a Chassis Information section in the back? Mine has table of Chassis Liquid Capacities. It's aaaaaalllll the way at the back of the manual. Cheers, Walter

Yeah, that's why I specified PWM. MPPT would serve no purpose in this application. As long as the alternator voltage is sufficient to charge the battery (which it is...), that's all that's needed, right? The charge controller will run wide open till it hits rated amperage, or the voltage reaches absorption voltage. Then it'll throttle back. The alternator provides enough volts to charge the lithium battery, so it doesn't need to be upconverted, just throttled back to the lithium battery's preferred voltages for absorption and then float or terminate. This might not be the fastest charge profile possible, but I'm not that interested in the shortest possible charge cycle. Why would the solar controller care if its current is coming from an alternator or a solar panel???? Cheers, Walter

Nah. Solar controllers are routinely undersized with respect to the rated amperage of the panels. The controller will modulate itself down to its rated capacity. Cheers, Walter

So... I've got a related philosophical question... What's the difference between a $425 60a DCDC charger, and a $100 60a PWM solar charge controller??? Why not just put a pwm solar controller between the alternator and the house batts? I'm not sure the solar controller cares what kind of technology is pushing the electrons. Cheers, Walter

Chuck, did you mean that the location of the Essex button varies? Regardless of where the coach was assembled... the Essex keypad does not have an external 'brain'. The keypad beside the entry door is a self-contained keyless entry system and is not connected to or in any way controlled by the wireless keyfob system. The OP's picture clearly shows a button and a bundle of wire attached to a wireless keyfob receiver. Like Dennis said... "That has NOTHING to do with the ESSEX door entry. " Cheers, Walter

Maybe they pulled your Essex programming button back over to the dash? Mine is just hanging under the passenger cup holder. The poster’s picture shows the button attached to the black box, so that button is not for the Essex. W

And a fuse at the battery, right??? 👍

Yeah, that’ll be the box for the wireless key fob. Not the entry keypad tho . Are y’all talking about the Essex keypad??? That’s totally separate from the keyfob remote. The Essex keypad is a stand-alone unit with no external ‘brain’. There’s another push button switch connected to the Essex that is used to program the Essex keypad. cheers Walter

Nice! Thanks for providing a way to keep the opus going. Cheers Walter

Many years ago I had an automotive body shop. We would put an ad in the paper for a body man or painter and have a long line of unhireable applicants out the door. So I had the bright idea of adding a simple qualification to the add ‘must pass drug test’. Guess how many applicants we got! Cheers Walter

I lost a lug nut recently and bought some replacements. They have "Tighten to 450-500 ft lb" stamped right into the nuts! Cheers, Walter

I’ve got the chassis-side combiner disconnected from my lithium house batteries. It would be nice to have some power from the chassis while underway, but in general I’m not looking for the alternator to charge the house batteries. As as long as I don’t depart at night with low batteries, the house should be able to run for 2+ days. And the generator is there as an alternative charging source. At some point I’ll probably reconfigure the combiner relay or add a dc/dc charger, but so far I haven’t been real motivated to try and connect the alternator to house batteries. Cheers Walter

Mine has the bmw lights, but I would assume they have similar mountings. Once I crawled up in there the attachments are pretty kludgy, but fairly intuitive. Mine just have some aluminum straps that go around the back of the light and hold it up in the aperture. I wish I had those van lights... I bet they are a much better fit for this application than the bmw housings. Cheers, Walter

After you fill it, watch it for several cycles. If the neck is cracked the level can go up/down a few times, sucking in air each cycle till the level eventually settles.

When the antifreeze heats up it expands, pressurizes the tank, pushes past the radiator cap and flows into the expansion tank. Then when the system cools down, it pulls the antifreeze back in. In mine, the difference between hot and cold is about 2-1/2 qt. If your level is not changing in the expansion tank it could mean there’s a leak where the pressure cap is soldered to the tube coming up out of the tank. This is a common failure point. If the tank is really low, it might explain yours not pulling in antifreeze when it cooled down, but if everything was sealed up it would likely expel some vapor when heating and then draw a significant amount of liquid back in as it cools. Cheers Walter

Also, consider having the sync cylinder rebuild while you’re in there. Mine started weeping shortly after I had all the rams done cheers Walter

Here’s my story https://www.irv2.com/forums/f115/need-advice-on-jacking-up-slide-out-431958-2.html Cheers Walter

diysolarforum has an active bunch of diy lithium builders. There are a small number of Chinese suppliers that folks report having experience with, mostly supplying prismatic sells for diy battery packs, and the feedback is kept updated on that site. I'd stick with a known supplier with references on that site and not experiment with new sources. Xuba is one with many reports of good service and supplying as agreed. It's kind of a wild west market with these gray market cells. Apparently the sellers latch on to a good supply of quality cells, but then have a hard time maintaining their supply over time. So whoever has the good cells right now is kind of a moving target. There are about 4-5 manufacturers of top quality lithium cells. Apparently the manufacturers occasionally dump a quantity of cells that didn't quite make the cut to be labeled 'grade A' and sold through retail channels. Somebody buys a large quantity of 2nd quality cells and then they go out through these sellers on alibaba. But there's not a steady and reliable stream of good cells, so it can be hit or miss. So, a certain brand of cells will be available for a while, then the sellers will shift to another brand. In my battery, cells were spec'd to be Lishen 274 ah cells, but the batteries arrived with ETC 277ah cells instead. Another quality brand is Eve with 280 ah cells.

I guess I should update... In general I'm really liking lithium batteries. But there have been some snags. As I dug into the batteries I found some serious problems with the construction. And after complaining to Xuba came to find they subcontracted construction to another company who was responsible for the shoddy assembly. Eventually came to the agreement that Xuba would find another contractor, carefully design a better-engineered 'product' version of the batteries and manufacture replacements. So that's where we are now. Xuba appears to be acting in good faith. The replacements should be done with assembly any day now and probably couple-months in shipping before I get them. Meanwhile, the batteries are working, but some of the connections inside have high resistance, and I'm having to work around limited current in and out of the batteries. Hopefully I'll be able to report wonderful customer service at Xuba and eventually getting the batteries of my dreams, but it's still in process at this point. Cheers, Walter

I wish you’d posted this about a month ago... before I bought a new hp mobile printer/scanner..,🤨 cheers Walter

The big 200a Dual Battery Isolator on the left feeds alternator current to both chassis and house batteries when the chassis side is charging (engine is running). This one is pretty straightforward. When you have elevated voltage coming from the alternator (middle terminal), you should see the voltage on the other two terminals. The smaller Lambert isolator on the right feeds charger/solar current to both house and chassis batteries when the house batteries are being charged. This one is not quite as straightforward as it looks... those diagrams posted above show the Chassis terminal on the right as being connected to that circuit breaker up above the big relay, but it's not actually like the drawing... On the top circuit breaker, the gray wire crimped to the 10ga red wire is a fusible link. From there, the red wire goes into the wire loom, crosses over to the other run box on the left side of the engine bay, through another relay in that box, back into the wire loom and back over to the battery isolator's right-side terminal. The big solenoid in the middle just combines the the chassis batteries (top terminal) with the house batteries (bottom terminal) only when you press the Battery Boost switch on the dash. Cheers, Walter.

That sounds like a plausible source of my problem. It seems to be vibration and maybe also heat related. Mostly shows up on the bumpy last 20mi of the trip home. I'll crawl under there and tighten the output speed sensor connections. Right, no warning lights. I've got a bluefire diagnostic adapter, but didn't have any fault codes. Their user interface is pretty clunky and crude, but it works...

Thanks. I'll double-check. Did yours also affect the cruise control?

Hi all, I've got an intermittent problem with the speedometer. I suspect it's related to the speed sensor, wherever that is... It usually starts happening several hours into a drive, and is made worse on a bumpy road. The speedo will drop by about half, then snap back up to speed, then sometimes shoot up 20% and immediately fall back to speed. This happens more or less randomly, but seems to be more frequent when the real axles hit a bump. When the cruise is engaged, it causes some jerkiness as the cruise control tries desperately to compensate for the wild speed changes. Since it affects the cruise control, I'm thinking it's not gauge related. I figure the gauge is reading speed off the data bus. Where does the system take speed information? I'm assuming there must be a sensor on the output shaft like a car would have? Do these sensors fail, or is this more likely connections/wiring? Thanks all, Walter

Sure. Send me PM with your address.