I plugged my trailer in a couple days ago to get ready for a trip. I went out a few minutes ago and heard the fan running on the converter. Thinking that is odd I went and checked on the battery and heard it boiling and it smelled like burned acid. I disconnected it and voltage on the battery was about 8 volts. I plugged in the converter and am reading over 13 volts. I'm thinking the trickle charger may have failed and it's been over charging. Any ideas?
If your battery is at 8 volts it's likely dead, so either your trickle charger isn't working or the battery simply went bad. Sounds like your converter went into full charge mode when it only saw 8 volts at the battery so its doing what it should.
Probably had a dead short in the battery. I agree that the converter did what it was suppose to do (i.e. go to full charge). How old was the battery? Did it have enough electrolyte?
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2013 Highlander AWD
2010 Fun Finder 189FBR
Into Camping and RC Flying
It was a 4 yr old Costco battery so it was pretty old already. I didn't check the electrolyte before charging so I may have killed it. I put a new one in and will monitor charge current and keep an eye on electrolyte.
I would also recommend keeping the battery on a BatteryMinder Plus. The converter might do a decent job, but might not. The BMP "pulses," supposedly prolonging battery life. Some experts say this is nonsense. I have been using a BMP for my batteries for several years with great results. But that is just one person's opinion.
I did keep the trailer plugged in continuously for years and it never lost water and stayed topped off. We moved and I've been storing at a friends house unplugged. Before I turned in the core, one cell looked like it had black gunk in it. A few cells were full and a few were low. I'm pretty sure one cell went bad. I would like to get a solar panel, I may look into that now that I can't plug in in storage.
Smoked battery
Linear Mode
