Quote:
Originally Posted by Oneilkeys
You were (are) having an issue with the alternator charging your house batteries. If the BIRD and Trombetta are working correctly, after you turn on you engine, the alternator charges only the chassis battery. When the voltage of the chassis battery gets above 12.8v for one minute, the BIRD senses that and opens the Trombetta to allow both banks to charge. It does that by sending voltage thru your purple wire to the Trombetta. Either that is not happening or the Trombetta is receiving the voltage but is not opening.
I asked if you had checked the voltages of the batteries while hooked up to shore power because if the BIRD works in that direction then the Trombetta is working. If you waited for the house batteries to charge above 13.1v, from the voltages you recorded while under shore power the Trombetta is not opening that way either. This means that you cannot rule out the Trombetta as the problem. However, If the BIRD is supposed to put out 13.2v to the Trombetta continuously and yours is only putting out 12.2v, then the BIRD is probably bad.
While your BIRD may be a different version, it looks like the same or a very similar model to the one in my 2016 Axis.
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Thanks Oneilkeys. I took additional voltage readings today to verify what I posted earlier. I also took readings when the generator was running:
Shore
Chassis
12.72
House
12.12
BIRD to
12.2
Relay (purple wire)
Alternator
Chassis
14.13
House:
12.59
BIRD to Relay (purple wire): 12.4
Generator
Chassis: 12.8
House: 14.38
BIRD to Relay (purple wire): 13.14
The shore power readings were taken after I had been hooked up to shore power for 3 days. Based on this it does not appear if the batteries had been charged from shore power. Am I interpreting this correctly?
When I took the alternator readings the engine had been running for about 10-15 minutes (and additional measurements after a couple of hours of driving). It does not appear if the Trombetta was opening and allowing the house batteries to charge. Based on the output at the BIRD of 12.4 volts (and what Thor stated of needing 13.2 or so volts) the Trombetta was not receiving enough voltage to open to the house batteries.
With the generator running and shore power disconnected the readings reflect that BIRD was outputting 13.14 to have the Trombetta kick over to the house batteries and begin charging them with 14.38v.
I did check the water level in the batteries and it was ok. Dashboard alternator reading all day today while driving was 13.1. It appears the alternator is ok.
A couple of questions:
1. Am I interpreting the readings correctly?
2. Why would the BIRD relay output work with the generator and not the alternator? Does this signify a potentially larger problem than a bad BIRD or Trombetta?
Thanks for your help.
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