Where is the battery in a Chevy Eldorado?

[ImmortalSoFar]

I've owned this thing for several months (and one new engine) and still can't find the backup battery. As soon as the new engine was fitted, the 12V system stopped working altogether unless it was plugged in.

Can anyone help? I'm full time and it's getting really frustrating!

Mike.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

Give us some more clues. Eldorados were built in a variety of styles & models on Dodge, Ford and Chevy chassis. Sounds like yours has a Chvey engine, but is it a Class C or Class A?  How long? What year?

It's possible it had only the engine battery for 12V power and they simply didn't hook up the house circuits when the engine was swapped.  Can you follow the power wires back from the 12V fuse panel and maybe locate some dangling battery leads?

 

[ImmortalSoFar]

Sorry, this is a 1989 C class chevy 350. It's old, falling to pieces and has probably been jerry rigged over the years (I had to cross the wires over on the rear lights so that the indicator and brake lights worked at the same time as the headlights). It has a mini-bath/shower at the back, toilet, fuse-box/fridge, bench seats and table, drivers seat.

I traced the line from the fuse box (thick red wired attached to the "battery goes here" point) to where it joins a whole bunch of others, meets a plug (can't see it, it's around a corner) and disappears under the floor.

What may be a red herring is that under the rear-most bench seat has a long cable with 3 thick wires. 2 are severed (green and yellow) and the blue is capped. However, this was always empty (we searched high and low when we first got it and never found the extra battery) and it used to hold a charge for 24 hours. Additionally, the 12v system used to work when we were driving but it doesn't any more. I ran a volt-meter on the wires to see if anything was trying to charge through them and there was no voltage.

Mike.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

My guess is that a prior owner did not want to maintain two batteries and simply elimnate dthe house battery and worked off the engine (chassis) battery. Then in the engine swap the house cables to the chassis battery got disconnected.  I suggest simply running new cable of suitable size to the battery for now. Depending on what 12V power demand is, you might get by with 8 or even 10 gauge wire. Be sure to include a suitable fuse on the power lead.  Just becareful whenusing it becasue you could run down the battery to the point where it won't start the engine in the a.m.

If you are comfortable working with electrical stuff, you could add a house battery somewhere, but not inside the rig unless it is a sealed battery such as an AGM type. Then put an isolater on it so it can be hooked to the engine charging system for charging while you drive, but will not drain the chassi battery.

 

[ImmortalSoFar]

No, we did run the house battery down to nothing and still managed to start her up without problems. Using a single battery isn't really an option - this is a mobile home/office so the power demands for the computers is pretty high.

I double checked under the vehicle and each of the storage areas but there is no attachment point for a house battery so, in the absence of any more defintive information, I'll assume it has to go under the seat and try and figure out some way of hooking it into the existing system.

Thanks anyway,

Mike.

 

[ImmortalSoFar]

Answering my own question for the benefit of any future lost souls who stumble across this problem.

It's mounted between the propane tank and the drivers seat underneath the vehicle and only accessible from the underside. I'm assuming that since the alternator is definately sending power and yet the house system doesn't work even with the engine running that the leads got knocked while the engine was being put in.

I was on the point of connecting a second battery to the charging unit since it would end up in parallel with the first anyway.

Thanks for your help.

Mike.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

Glad you finally found it and are on your way to a solution. 

 

[Jim Dick]

I've owned this thing for several months (and one new engine) and still can't find the backup battery. As soon as the new engine was fitted, the 12V system stopped working altogether unless it was plugged in.

Can anyone help? I'm full time and it's getting really frustrating!

Mike.

Mike,

Did you look under the entry step? Sometimes they put the aux battery there. The other place would be under the hood. It should be positioned so it can vent to the outside.