|
Jim, I've had a 310 and 345. On both of them the the starting battery would go dead when it sat. Seems to be characteristic of most motorhomes, not just Airstreams. One way to prevent it is to disconnect the starting battery when it sits. I kept a plastic bag in the battery box of the 345 to put over the pos terminal when I pulled it off the battery. (If you use the booster switch to start off the house batteries with the starting battery cable off, it will be hot) Another alternative I've used is to get a little trickle charger for the starting battery and use it enough to keep the battery up. You can hook it to the battery, or you can open the hood and clip it on to the starting battery terminal of the isolator. You can tell which one that is by disconnecting the battery and see which one is dead. Unless all three batteries are identical (age, capacity, condition etc) they won't charge properly if they are jumped together for the univolt to charge.
A lot of the big motorhomes like the Bluebird that a previous employer had, have one set of batteries to do everything. Seems like an Airstream could be rewired for that. You would just have to be careful when dry camping not to run them all down. If you had a toad you would have a source of a jump start.
I wonder if it is possible that the isolator has enough phantom load to kill the battery? That's the only thing that stays hooked up on a mh that a regular truck doesn't have. I know that you have a voltage drop thru them, so they use some power.
Neal
|