Freightliner Chassis Owners - House Battery Charging

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Kim (skyking4ar2) Bertram

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For those of you with Freightliner chassis diesels, do any of you have a motorhome model that charges the house batteries while the engine is running, i.e the diesel alternator output is also directed to the house batteries?
 
Our Winnebago does. Don't know if Freightliner does the installation or Winnebago. One time the solenoid went out that connects the house batteries when the alternator is charging and our house batteries would go flat, unexpectedly. Installed a new solenoid and everything went back to normal. We run the inverter while driving and run the frig on electric instead of gas.
 
Yes, like Neal mentioned.  In the front, there's a box, I forget the label name, trickle charge or something like that.  I've heard that it diverts some of the engine alternator power to the house batteries.
 
Kim (skyking4ar2) Bertram said:
For those of you with Freightliner chassis diesels, do any of you have a motorhome model that charges the house batteries while the engine is running, i.e the diesel alternator output is also directed to the house batteries?
There is a device made by Intellitec that is usually installed by the MH manufacturer that does this. I can't remember the exact name but will look for it tomorrow.
 
Gary,

Can I assume you have the ISB engine as well? I am not finding any ISL engine coaches with that feature.

I was having a conversation with a Thor Tuscany owner who says his does, but he has the smaller XTE coach with the smaller, ISB-XT engine. Interesting that the Winnebago folks (so far) have that option.

Kim
 
Kim,

This feature is added by the Coach manufacturer. Our Monaco Camelot (25ISL) uses the Intellitec Diesel BIRD 2 (Bi-Dierctional Relay-Delay) and their "Big Boy" It also charges the Chassis batteries while parked. (Bi-Directional)

https://www.intellitec.com/assets/pdf/1453-intellitec-pdf-template-53-00839-000.pdf

ken
 
The 'other' brand that is/was installed by Winnebago from about 2006 or so in their diesel pushers units was the Trik L Start....  FWIW
 
For those of you with Freightliner chassis diesels, do any of you have a motorhome model that charges the house batteries while the engine is running...

All of them, to the best of my knowledge.

1.This is a coach function and has nothing at all to do with the brand of chassis. It also has nothing to do with the engine size or brand.  The chassis just provides the engine and alternator - the coach builder adds everything else.

2. I don't know of any brand of coach, Class A or B or C, that does NOT charge the house batteries while the engine is running. The function has been standard in motorhomes for decades!  It's a very simple function that requires at most a simple relay or solid state isolator box.

Are you perhaps thinking of charging the chassis batteries from shore power? That is a less common function but still not related to the chassis brand.
 
It was my understanding that the Trik L Start charges the engine batteries, from the house batteries, while plugged into shore power, but the house batteries may be directly connected to the alternator through a solenoid, while the engine is running and charging.
 
Is there a way of determining if the chassis battery(s) is being charged by the house power?
 
What I don't understand is the marine world has been using what we call automatic charging relays since the early 2000's. Blue Seas make some of the better ones. They close automatically when the voltage on either side reaches ~13.6V and disconnects at about 12.8V. They can also be manually operated for an emergency parallel feature.
I realize the RV world made their own boxes before the marine ones were available but I would think that by now they would have switched over to a less complex system.
https://www.bluesea.com/products/category/35/Automatic%20Charging%20Relays
 
I realize the RV world made their own boxes before the marine ones were available but I would think that by now they would have switched over to a less complex system.

I think they have already done that. Intelletec has replaced their big Battery Control Center with the smaller and less expensive BIRD, Magnum offers their Battery Combiner, etc. These are all bi-directional units that manage the flow both ways, house to chassis and vice versa, as needed. The cost is modest enough that all Rvs can use them.

Blue Sea, BEP, Marinco, and now Progressive Industries are all part of the Power Product LLC group of companies. I wouldn't be surprised Power Products push them collectively to produce more product variants targeted at the RV market.

Fleetwood and National RV provided bi-directional charge control on nearly all models since the early 90's. Some of the others were a bit later getting on the bandwagon, but pretty much everybody does it now. Digital electronics have made it inexpensive.
 
Mine definitely does not charge the house batteries while under way. The battery monitor shows them drawing down enroute.

Then yours was broken, cause it certainly was not the way it was designed. All it takes is a faulty relay or a broken wire and the system doesn't work.
 
Well, mine has never worked and I bought the coach new.

That said, my initial contact with Thor ended with them telling me where they thought the Intellitec BIRD (and I know what I think it looks like) was located but it was not. This is not the first incidence of this kind of problem and I attribute it to the fact my coach was actually started at Damon, is titled as a Damon, and was apparently an early delivery while Thor was buying Damon.

None of my electrical schematics have this system on it, but I will be requesting the engineering drawings.

Supposedly there are fuses on the 12v bus that can trip keeping the charging function from working, but again discovering and identifying them is a problem without a little better documentation.

It's complicated when you don't know what you don't know.
 
If your coach has an Aux or Emergency Start switch on the dash, I can pretty much guarantee it was designed to charge the house batteries from the engine alternator.
 
I think we're past that question of function; Thor has confirmed the functionality of charging both sets of batteries exists. The question at the moment is locating the BIRD piece and determining where fuses may have been blown or wiring issues that are keeping that charging from happening.
 
Kim, our Winnebago Tour has a Battery Isolation Manager (BIM) which functions similarly to a BIRD, but it's not the same thing. It's a sealed circuit board that's bolted right to the House Battery relay and it monitors the status of the house and chassis charging systems, and both battery banks. It will NOT allow the engine alternator to charge the house-batteries unless two conditions are met.

The house batteries have to be at or below 80% SOC AND the chassis-batteries have to be nearly fully charged. If the BIM doesn't detect both those conditions, it won't allow the alternator to charge the house-batteries. This is a relatively new charging system that Winnie started using in their larger coaches. I'm wondering if your coach has a similar setup.

Kev
 

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