Battery Question - Fiberglass RV
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Old 05-08-2008, 01:42 AM   #1
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How long do you have to drive to put a good charge back into the battery? I don't think that I am going to drive more than 75 miles between some camping spots and some of the places do not have electricity. How long will a charge like that last?
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Old 05-08-2008, 12:50 PM   #2
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Depends on many things.

The status of your tow vehicle battery and alternator. If your alternator must charge your tow vehicle battery then less power is available to charge the camper battery. It will charge both at the same time and take longer.

The status of your camper battery.

The size of the HOT wire that supplies the voltage from your tow vehicle to the camper. The larger gauge of wire works better than a smaller gauge of wire.

Will you be driving at night? Your alternator will have to power the lights thus supplying less power to the batteries. Remember, it must charge both the tow vehicle and camper batteries at the same time.

How fast you drive. If it takes several hours to go the 75 miles then both batteries more than likely will be charged however if do it in 75 minutes, that may not be enough time.


The best thing to do is to charge your camper battery before the trip/
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Old 05-09-2008, 04:05 PM   #3
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Added to Darwin's good advice is that the size of the white return wire also comes into play.

Every bit of electricity used by the trailer comes back on that wire, not just the battery charging, but also the tail-lights, the fridge (if running on 12VDC), the brakes and the brake lights. That stuf is all basically coming in on different wires but coming back on the white wire in the umbilical cable (with a questionable assist from whatever manages to get from frame to ball to ball mount to hitch to frame)...
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Old 05-09-2008, 04:30 PM   #4
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Typically the battery charge line is ony a couple amps which is just a trickle charge. If your battery is dead it will take hours. I would only count on it as a top up.
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Old 05-10-2008, 09:24 PM   #5
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When I was fulltiming, I rarely camped (months) where there was electricity available (when there was, like in the bathroom, I'd take battery and charger over to get a full charge). Mostly I relied on the truck charging system to recharge the egg battery and it seemed to do a fine job (I never bothered to measure except maybe an occasional VM check). Did that for years.
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