Charging question

[TomG]

I have a 2012 2650 and have installed a TriMetric battery monitor. This is a great mod and confirms my suspicion that when the engine is running I am not receiving any positive amps to my house batteries. Any suggestions?

[ATVer]

Could be a number of issues, however if it has never functioned properly, it could be a missing fuse in position F1 (bottom right) of the battery control center located on the left side of the step well. On some 2012s, mine included, the fuse was not installed at the factory due to confusion between the component supplier and FR. I believe the fuse also impacts the circuit to cross tie the chassis battery and the coach batteries via the switch under the drivers seat.

[TomG]

That fuse was missing on my unit too and I replaced it. Now my emergency start button works. That's what makes this perplexing for me.

[ATVer]

Not sure what you meant by the last post, was the charging problem fixed by the fuse or? My unit takes a little time to start charging the coach batteries as it makes sure the chassis battery is fully charged first before the alternator is tied to the coach battery. I think if your chassis battery has a weak or cell going bad it may never cross over.

[TomG]

I found the missing fuse after seeing a post about this several months ago, so that isn't the issue. I will test the chassis battery and then test the charging crossover as I hadn't thought of this internal charging process before. Thanks for your help.

[ATVer]

Sounds like a review of the electrical diagrams is in order to determine potential causes. You may have to trace out the circuits looking for a loose/disconnected wire or wiring error during installation. There is a lot to these units and errors do happen such as the missing fuse and as I found in the plumbing system which bypassed city water flow around the water filter.

[RamblerGuy]

Have you confirmed the BIRD module in the battery control center is receiving power from the chassis when it is running? To check it, remove the connector on the BIRD, connect a voltmeter to the IGN terminal of the connector and turn the ignition switch on. You should have about 12.5 volts with it on and about 14.5 volts with the engine running. If you have no voltage on the IGN terminal, you may have a bad wire from the chassis feed to the BIRD, missing or bad fuse (probably an inline fuse under the instrument panel) or missing or bad fuse or relay in the chassis (look in your chassis owner's manual for the fuse and relay location).

[RamblerGuy]

You can find a description of the BIRD module operation in the forum's library in the Power and Electrical category. This is for a module with five wires. Some have four wires. The difference is that the five wire ones have an "Auxiliary" connection that comes from the emergency start switch and the four wire ones have the emergency start switch wired as a jumper to the isolation relay.


Forest River Forums - Downloads - Intellitec BIRD Datasheet 00-01000-000.pdf

I attached a photo of the area under the steering wheel to show the 5 amp inline fuse that feeds the "IGN" terminal on the BIRD on our Ford chassis. You can see the inline fuse holder with the blue wires. An orange wire goes under the door kickplate to the BIRD connector.


Also, do you know for sure that the isolation relay is working? As the Intellitec BIRD datasheet describes, when you are on shore power, it should connect the coach 12 volt system to the chassis 12 volt system to keep the chassis battery charged. You can verify it is doing that by checking the voltage on the chassis battery when on shore power. It should show about 13.5 volts if it is being charged, but about 12.5 volts if it is not being charged. If the BIRD is working properly you should have 12 volt power on the relay terminal with the red wire when the BIRD operation calls for the coach and chassis systems to be connected (coach charging chassis, chassis charging coach, or emergency start switch depressed).

[TomG]

I found the inline fuse under the dash that feeds the IGN terminal. I reseated and cleaned it (as it seemed ok) and found that the system now works fine!!


Thank you RamblerGuy and ATVer for providing your assistance. I continue to be amazed at how valuable the forum continues to be.