2018 Forester 3011DS Coach Batteries Question

[billwww3]

Originally Posted by CapnJoe

OK, it's been a while but I wanted to give an update on the battery issue. It's a long story but two weeks after replacing the batteries with the AGM's they were bad also! It took a while to get an appointment with the dealer (I have a service plan) and it took them a week to find the issue, but it was frayed wire inside a box right under where the house cut-off switch is. Dealer couldn't explain how it got frayed but it would rub against ground when the RV was bouncing around. They also found the solenoid was "wired in reverse" and corrected that.
I got lucky Sam's club accepted the batteries back under warranty no questions asked. Only problem was every Sam's club in the area is out of AGM's, guess they're sitting on a cargo ship off the California coast. Had to replace with new flooded batteries, saved a little money there.
It's been two weeks and everything is working fine in the driveway. We're going camping next week - that will be the big test, we're going to pretend dry camp one night just to see if everything continues to work.

Wow Cap'n! lucky you did not have a fire with frayed wires shorting out. I have an amp gauge to install in hopes of monitoring the draw on the house batteries so i will know when something is draining them; i'm kinda bad about leaving things running and i've heard that some sensors are on full time regardless of cutoff switch. So far the factory solar is keeping up when in storage. One thing i did notice is that when voltage drops below some level, the solar will not charge the batteries; it has to have enough voltage to run the controller i guess.
good luck!!

[CapnJoe]

Originally Posted by billwww3

Wow Cap'n! lucky you did not have a fire with frayed wires shorting out. I have an amp gauge to install in hopes of monitoring the draw on the house batteries so i will know when something is draining them; i'm kinda bad about leaving things running and i've heard that some sensors are on full time regardless of cutoff switch. So far the factory solar is keeping up when in storage. One thing i did notice is that when voltage drops below some level, the solar will not charge the batteries; it has to have enough voltage to run the controller i guess.
good luck!!

Yes, we were lucky no fire.

I bought a large knife switch that will mount right on the battery post, similar to what I use for my toad. I'll be installing that on the negative terminal when I winterize this year to make sure every thing is off.