Well yesterday was a busy day, at least in my little world, as I started into installing our new lithium batteries. Now I knew this was going to be a major undertaking, after all I was removing four six volt golf cart AGM lead batteries so a series / parallel configuration , and installing the four twelve volt golf cart sized lithium batteries in a parallel only configuration.
Now add to that that they are located on a slide tray in an open compartment at the rear of the coach, so a bit of a dirty location, and the connections were a little suspect before, notice the temporary installation of a shunt to let us monitor our battery condition. That has been moved and properly mounted.
To add to the challenge the fact that the tray was custom made for the present batteries and the new batteries don’t quite fit, so yesterday was a long day of deciding how to overcome these little obstacles. I was able to cut most of the cables and shorten them to work for now, I had previously purchased the lugs and the hydraulic crimper, I should have upgraded my cutters as 2/0 cable was almost too much for my old side cutters.
Today has me finishing the temporary install of only four of the batteries, but this will actually give us over a one hundred amp hours more that the previous battery bank. Hoping to run a test tomorrow, by unhooking from shore power and enjoying a normal night, I will fire the boiler to simulate a cold evening of boondocking, and checking the battery condition in the morning.
So I have connected the new battery bank to the coach system and have the solar connected to top the batteries up, so that I can reset the shunt to zero to give me a true status of the battery condition, and the true SOC (state of charge).
Day 800
The Buchanan's Rolling Down The Road 