Battery Question(s)
1. Are all 3 of my batteries (2 coach and 1 engine) wired in parallel – all together?
2. When I use 12 volt power in the coach, am I drawing voltage off the engine battery along with the coach’s batteries?
3. If so – if I’m not careful – I could kill all 3 batteries and not be able to start the vehicle.(?)
I’m still a newbe going through the learning curve. I have a 2013 Forester, c-class. My multimedia center is in the dash board, so I wanted to know if it was drawing off the engine battery like a normal vehicle radio – or if it was connected to the coach batteries. Doing what I thought would be a good test, I disconnected the engine battery to see if the multimedia station would still turn on. (Under normal conditions when you open the driver or passenger door, the parking lights and running lights turn on.) To my surprise, when I opened the driver’s door, the parking lights and running lights came on. And when I turned the ignition key to the “On” position the dash lights came on. I wasn’t expecting that because I thought I would have killed the vehicle’s normal power by disconnecting the engine battery. Out of curiosity, with the engine battery still disconnected I turned the coach’s battery disconnect to the “Off” position. Doing that I lost all 12 volt power to the coach, but still had power in the driver’s compartment.
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