Battery gone bad

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Pigsty

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Joined
Mar 2, 2009
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Just returned from a trip on the Natchez Trace Parkway.  It is a wonderful trip for those who haven't been.  It's 450 miles with no stop signs and no billboards and lots of interesting stops along the way.  We had a house battery failure along the way evidenced by strong hydrogen sulfide gas odors, which prompts my question.

Can you simply remove the house battery and not damage other electrical components?  If removed and not replaced, do you connect the battery terminals, or keep them isolated from each other?  We immediately purchased a new battery, but would have preferred to wait since we usually driving or on shore power, and rarely need the house battery.

Advice greatly appreciated.
 
Hard to say whether you need a battery in the circuit or not, or how to do it if not.  It depends on how your rig is set up at the factory and you didn't even mention what make & model you have, so we can't even guess.

Leaving the battery out probably won't damage anything, but some things may not work.  Some RVs ground everything through the battery negative terminal, while others have a separate ground at the converter and can run fine with no battery.

How many wires connect to the battery terminals? A picture would be  a big help. 

If you turn your battery disconnect switch off (assuming there is one), do your 12v lights still work when on shore power? If so, chances are that most things would still work without a battery as long as you had shore power.
 
Pigsty said:
  If removed and not replaced, do you connect the battery terminals, or keep them isolated from each other? 
Click to expand...

You don't ever want to connect the battery cables together. 

You would probably damage your converter at a minimum.
 
In general you can remove the house batteries without problems

HOWEVER: There are some converters that do not work properly unless a battery is attached  (Older low end jobs, far as I know no longer made)

Just so you know

As for the wires... IF there is more than one wire hooked to a battery post then you can (And should) connect all the wires hooked to that post together unless one of them just runs to another battery (leave that one out) and then insulate the wires and teh connector (A quarter inch bolt works well)

If the wire just connects two batteries together leave it out (Not connected) on both ends.

Take a detailed photo (or 2 or 3 or half a dozen) of the batteries BEFORE you disconnect anything

All wires hooked to the POSITIVE most post (Wires from a positive post that run off into the rig) Give 'em a shot of RED enamal or nail polish before disconnecting

All wires hooked to the most NEGATIVE post (Again wires running off into the rig) get BLACK paint.

Wires that just hook battery to battery.. Well, you can label those any way you wish (White, Yellow)

 
FWIW:  A couple of weeks ago I removed my batteries to build a new battery box in my 1990 Southwind.  The batteries were out of the rig for two days with no problems, the converter worked fine running the 12-volt lights while on shore power.

Steve
 
Thanks Roamer.

Of course the problem most folks have is they do not take detailed photos, they do not mark the wires, They trust to memory and then.....

Well, I forogot what happens next.. (Or they forget which wire is which)

The fact that RV are wired by folks who think the black wire is the HOT wire.. Don't help
 
Thanks all for the responses.  My takeaway was that removing the house battery and keeping the terminals separated will not damage other components.  If that is not correct, please respond again.  Thanks again for your wisdom.

By the way, the Natchez Trace is a wonderful trip for those who haven't been.  Try to avoid Ratliff landing RV Park.  It's really for fishermen(ladies).
 
I think you got it.. Worst case it won't work right till you re-install the battery

Even worse case you don't read my last two posts and take the hints there-in

Be sure to insulate the wires that are hooked to the POSITIVE terminal,, I usually use something like an old pill bottle, bolt the wires together, shove them into the pill bottle and tape the bottle over the bolt/connectors when I need to do that kind of thing.

 
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