We headed off with our 300w inverter and 12a smart charger all connected. A new solonoid at the engine (cut iff 12.4v) and 100a fuses.
120w solar but I thought, cloudy victoria - doesnt matter. Ive got it covered.
To cut a long story short, our 100a AGM went down to 11.5v after a few days away from 240v. So into the recreation reserve powered site at Port Campbell. Hooked up the smart charger and left the van to go touring. Returned 4 hours later and...battery hadnt recovered much. Suggested to my wife we need a new AGM.
Looked at the charger and it had been switched to charge on "maintenance" 1amp !!!
Oh dear. Put it on full charge and bingo. 12amps and charged up in no time.
See, we hadnt used the van for 4 months hence the trickle charge was selected. :(
Do you recall a silly mistake?
Tony
-- Edited by Eaglemax on Thursday 23rd of August 2018 09:39:18 PM
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Be nice... if I wanted my school teacher here I would have invited him...
I have pulled out of the driveway with the jockey wheel down, after using it to lift the rig on the ball. Ok for a short while wondering what the extra noise was. But when we 'hit' the speed hump up the road it was a bit rough. Well just required a new bracket and jockey wheel.
One time, deep in the bush, I was jerry-rigging a battery to charge some other low voltage item and I perfectly happily connected the red wire to the black terminal and the black wire to the red terminal. I have no idea why I did this but it seemed quite reasonable at the time!
Fortunately, the fuse saved the appliance.
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"I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken"
Oliver Cromwell, 3rd August 1650 - in a letter to the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland
I note you have a 100 amp fuse from the car Why? surely not getting aconstant 100amp charhe to the battery mine is 40 amp but I have had a 20amp not blow.
I note you have a 100 amp fuse from the car Why? surely not getting aconstant 100amp charhe to the battery mine is 40 amp but I have had a 20amp not blow.
It happens I had the spare, manual reset type.
I think the amperage of a system depends on the cable size. Mine is 6mm thick.
What is the harm JB?
This type
-- Edited by Eaglemax on Friday 24th of August 2018 10:00:39 PM
Eaglemax the harm could be that the fuse needs to be the weakest link in the system so it blows before anything else gets damaged if anything goes wrong.with 100a fuse in the system i think something else may give first. can get expensive .
What ever size fuse you have it needs to reach 125% of its rating to fuse "blow". If it was provided power for a 12 volt fridge for instant normally 15 amp current draw just imagine how much damage that many amps would do to it.
6 B&S cable is 13.5mmsq could carry 100 amps perhaps depending on length, 6mmsq good for 40 amps once again depending on length.
My new Everest has two 10mmsq twin cables one to fridge 20 amp fuse at battery, the other via VSR to house battery 40 amp fused never blown so not getting more than 40 amps through.
Recent trip away the cable came out of terminal at the fridge touched metal frame fuse simply blew . connect wire replace fuse back in business.
-- Edited by JBDUBBO on Saturday 25th of August 2018 10:59:08 AM
I think the main subject was making silly mistakes -
I left the hand brake on for quite a few kms with our Eagle once in the Atherton Tablelands - REMEDY - paint the hand brake lever with the brightest paint I could get!
I left the clips undone on one side of th roof on our van - thanks to a friendly truckie, no damage was done.
THE BEST REMEDY IS TO IGNORE ANYONE WHO SPEAKS TO YOU WHILE YOU ARE BUSY PACKING UP. Talk later!
On the issue of fuses, I regret not photocopying a "Fuse Chart" that the techs at OTC Ceduna had. The smallest one on the list was a 2" nail, the biggest was a 3/8" bolt!!
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Warren
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If you don't get it done today, there's always tomorrow!
On the issue of fuses, I regret not photocopying a "Fuse Chart" that the techs at OTC Ceduna had. The smallest one on the list was a 2" nail, the biggest was a 3/8" bolt!!
I like it :)
Some years ago I redesigned a piece of field kit for the army, it used a powerful 12V motor powered by a 100Ah battery. The original version had an external fuse carrier and the fuse often blew due to overloading of the motor. Fortunately the fuse clips size and spacing was just right for the brass cartridge of a 7.62mm round :)
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"I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken"
Oliver Cromwell, 3rd August 1650 - in a letter to the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland
Got the fuse thing. However many diagrams on google images have 100amp fuses. Perhaps a 100 amp like I have at the car battery and prior to the van battery the a fuse block from van battery onwards with 20 amto fuses etc.
Talk about a fuse chart. My wife and I have a "pack up list". It started off because my hotch area- I'd always forget a proceedute
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Be nice... if I wanted my school teacher here I would have invited him...
As a relative newby to caravanning on our first run I managed to drive about 250 km without the safety chains attached. To avoid further extreme embarrassment, I made up detailed checklists for heading off and for setting up camp. Heading-off list runs to over 80 items to check! That includes unplugging power, releasing handbrake, stowing chocks, etc. In the past 30,000 km we've still managed to forget dozens of different items... Fortunately not fatal.
I was cutting the lawn once and the connection came off the spark plug, I seemed to think it was a good idea to push it back on while the mower was running, silly mistake.
Fortunately not fatal. 
