RV FEATURE
How old is your vehicle's starter battey?
4. BATTERIES
Today’s starter batteries are extremely reliable
and long lasting, but if venturing anywhere
remote it would pay to replace it if it is more
than six/seven years old.
If not, buy one of the small lithium-battery
jump starters. They really do work well and
hold their charge (literally) for many years.
Do not, however, get carried away by the
vendors’ absurd practice of quoting the
battery capacity in milliamp/hours (typically
12,000 to 18,000). That’s 12 to 18Ah, which is
still ample but less numerically impressive.
The RV’s auxiliary batteries may well need
replacing, but the only effective way to tell a
lead acid or AGM’s health is to have it fully
charged and then measure the voltage across
it after it has rested totally off-load after at
least two full days. If it is less than about 12.6
volts, it is time to replace it.
The industry determinant of ‘life-span’ is
when its storage capacity is 80 per cent of
what it was when new — and that’s realistic.
5. INTERCONNECTING
PLUGS AND SOCKETS
This affects camper trailers and caravans.
It can particularly be an issue if poor quality
plugs and sockets have been used, as, for
example, with the now many fake ‘Anderson’
units, which at first glance are hard to pick
from the more costly (but well worth it)
genuine articles.
The non-genuine articles have their vital
electrically-conducting components made
from a cheap metal that looks just fine when
new, but then progressively corrodes. The
resultant voltage drop causes many owners to
wrongly assume the battery is faulty and thus
it is prematurely replaced.
There is little an owner can do to remedy
this cheaply: the solution is to have an
auto-electrician supply and fit the genuine
Anderson units — and that is not a cheap job.
As in life in general, you rarely find Mercedes
quality at Lada prices.
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