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Old 04-19-2018, 11:30 PM   #1
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Brand: Thor Motor Coach
Model: Vegas 25.4
State: Wisconsin
Posts: 41
THOR #10220
Smile Batteries on my Thor Vegas

I was out doing some battery maintenance on my 2017 rig after the last four months of extended winter here in Wisconsin. The house batteries were pretty low and took about a half gallon of distilled water. I had the rig plugged into shore power all winter (110volt/15amp as I have not had an electrician wire up a 30amp yet) to keep the batteries charged and to avoid them from freezing. I checked after topping off all of the cells for a broken case or leaks but found none. I will keep the rig plugged into shore power and check the water levels again in about a week. Is it unusual to have to use that much distilled water to top off 2 house batteries?

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Old 04-20-2018, 12:04 AM   #2
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Model: Travato
State: Florida
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THOR #1765
You need to check if your WFCO converter/charger is working correctly. I have owned both a 2014 Vegas and 2016 Axis and neither converter/charger worked as it should. After the batteries are fully charged, the converter/charger should go into “maintenance” mode where it drops from 13.5 to 13.1v. If that does not happen and the batteries continue to be charged at 13.5v, that can boil over the batteries, vaporize the electrolyte and eventually kill the batteries. I purchased and installed a Progressive Dynamics PD4655 converter/charger which works like it should. The WFCOs are pretty much junk. However, it is possible that yours works as it should. From your problem, I doubt it.
The converter/charger should also start out at 14.1v if your batteries are below 50% charge in “boost mode”. Neither of my WFCO chargers did that either which meant it took much longer to charge a deeply discharged battery.
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Old 04-20-2018, 01:20 AM   #3
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Brand: Thor Motor Coach
Model: Vegas 24.1
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I have never had to add water to any of the 3 batteries in my 2016 Vegas. It is always plugged into at least 20 AMP. We have had for 22 months and 13,200 miles. When we use at racetrack overnight with heat, we see only a loss of 1 red bulb on panel in morning.

I have heard about many battery issues, I have not seen any with our unit.

It generaly never sis 2 or 3 weeks.
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Old 04-20-2018, 12:50 PM   #4
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PS - I forgot to mention in my thanks that we bought our rig in early December of 2017 and yesterday was the first time I had checked our house batteries. Not very smart on my part. ��
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Old 04-20-2018, 02:08 PM   #5
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We picked up our 2018 Hurricane last month and the first thing I did was check the house batteries, they took 1/2 gallon of water between the two of them.
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Old 04-20-2018, 03:07 PM   #6
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I had to add almost that amount upon delivery of ours. Also I was never able to get to the specific gravity (SG) a proper deep cycle should have. Finally changed out them a couple of weeks ago.
During the winter months the batteries should be checked once a month when on either the WFCO or a battery tender. Once you get familiar with how often to add distilled water you may be able to increase the check intervals to 6 weeks or even two months.
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Old 04-25-2018, 01:56 PM   #7
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THOR #10220
Smile Continuing Saga

Finally put a volt meter on my house batteries and they both read 5.5volts! Argh! I blame myself for them getting fried while in storage on 15amp shore power and not checking the water level for 4 months. Picked up a couple of Interstate deep cycle marine/rv batteries Group 24 at Costco and still needed to add water to the new ones but they checked out having 12.65 volts each. I will still check my WFCO charger/converter as per Oneilkeys advice and will monitor these new batteries a lot closer for a while. Thanks to all of the Forum members that sent advice to my post.
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