Lifepo4 battery in 1990 Lance?

[jaycocreek]

Will putting a 100ah Lifepo4 battery in a 1990 Lance with a single battery compartment work right?(picture below of converter/charger)It would basically double my house capacity from my currant Group 27 lead acid..

Will this work and charge completely..I think the answer to charging is it will not charge completely, but I am asking..

What issues would I have or would I?

Would I be better to use it as a standalone battery with a charger for Lifepo4 batteries?



Recommendations?

[jaycocreek]

Carrying a generator has never been a problem in any of the RV's I've had..I usually just set it in the door and unload it when there...With my TC,I carry it in the back seat..The old days were simple,just use the battery as needed then run the generator to charge it and anything else needed charged and watch dvds while doing so..I am almost always in the shade under trees because I camp exclusively in the national forest of Idaho boondocking where any generator noise is only heard by us...

I'm still on the fence of going lithium and either upgrading the converter or just using a good portable charger..The cold weather here could be an issue for it and the Sio2 is not off the table..If I put the new battery in its place,weight is not an issue,if I was too use it portable,then weight is an issue...$500+ batteries are hard to swallow for me..lol

Thanks for the replies..

[3_tons]

“also if I wanted a Generator I would have never put solar on, personaly I hate camping when there is some one with a generator around, I go out for peace and quiet and enjoying nature, not to listen to the power fist generator hammering away all morning because some one couldnt have spent a few extra bucks on the 80K trailer to put solare and decent batteries in...”

Ah, Soooo TRUE, I couldn’t agree more!!

3 tons

[BFL13]

Yes, I forgot you can have a weight issue with a 5er, especially if you have a Diesel truck with 4x4! We had no problem with the gas truck 2x2 and our 28.5 ft 5er for what we can carry in the box. The new trucks are even stronger than our 2003, which was a jump from before that. Good thing!

Anyway, the whole point is to do some serious calculations for your own scenario and not just get caught up in the fashion of the times. Nobody else is in a position to tell you what to do.

Not clear if we answered the OP's question for his situation. At least he has some factors to mull over that ought to help.

[StirCrazy]

BFL13 wrote:
Lots of calculations can be made. One thing to remember is that with a 5er you can carry lots of batteries and a big portable gen to run a big amp charger, so you can take advantage of Li charging amps.

(But then I would say since you can carry all those FLAs why spend all that $ on LFP? Seems silly to me.)

(

few reasons, that are simular to reasons in the TC. Weight being a big one, at 80 lbs each I would been 6 to get the same usable output, which I am thinking of doing... but at almost 90lbs for a rolls surett thats puts over 500lbs at the front of my 5th only 5 feet behind the pin. how much extra tounge weight do you think that adds compared to 80lbs that I could put say 10 feet behind the pin. huge difference in load on the truck. also at about 300 bucks per battery (I dont buy cheep lead acid batteries, I learnd my lesson from doing that), I am at 1800 bucks for lead acid, hmm I think I was at around 2000.00 to build two 280 ah li banks.. plus instead or 800 cycles I can get up to 7000. LiFePo4 are probably now the cheepest per usable AH in the market now, this want the case a couple years ago, then when you look at the longer life they become even cheeper over time.

also if I wanted a Generator I would have never put solar on, personaly I hate camping when there is some one with a generator around, I go out for peace and quiet and enjoying nature, not to listen to the power fist generator hammering away all morning because some one couldnt have spent a few extra bucks on the 80K trailer to put solare and decent batteries in...

Steve

[3_tons]

“Where do you carry the 2200?”

I have a 09 Eagle Cap 995 and it originally came with an Onan option in the drivers side rear wing...But I’m not so much a Onan fan, so when I ordered the build I had them delete the rear horizontal genny door in lieu of a street side, in-the-wing vertical door, just large enough to slip the 2200 thru and a few supplies... Our previous 05 Citation 9-6 had no such provision, so lesson in packaging learned...

In retrospect, I was uber lucky that Eagle Cap agreed to accommodate that on-the-fly change... The opposing wing has two 30# LPG bottles, so they used the same dimension door... I believe the standard build is mostly with the emphasis on options, of which the Onan is a dealer cash cow...Also, has 60gal fresh water and 2” walls... It’s primarily for these reasons and off-grid camping that I pulled the trigger... Spent a bunch of time reconfiguring the entire electrical to what’s now a passive-cascading (smart) whole camper system with two sub-panels and two ATS switches... Can run the AC for about 3 hrs (compressor cycling...) from the 200a/hr Li concurrent with solar...

3 tons

[BFL13]

The Prosine 100amp charger part is PF corrected ISTR, so the 2200 could run that going full out at 14.6 at 100 amps AFAIK. Itinerant does not charge at 14.6, but at 14.1 with his LFPs so that does help when using a smaller gen too.

Our Class C has no gen (it was an option the original owner did not choose it seems). A 2200 goes in the gen compt, but not the 3000 we had, so am using a 75 amp charger-max non-PF corrected the 1700 running VA rated 2200 can do.

So that's where I got the gen size limit. If we could have room for the 3000, we could run 150 amps like we did with the 5er we had--the gen went in the truck bed with the 5er.

Where do you carry the 2200? We have no room in the TC to carry any gen, and the truck is full of dog crates. The gen smells of gas anyway, so no good in the truck. As it is we don't need a gen for how long the TC is ever off-grid. Long off-grid time means use the Class C.

[3_tons]

“ With a TC, the first limit is the size of generator you can take along, if any. That can reduce the size of charging amps and whether an Li is "worth it"

How so??... I carry a Honda 2200i and have onboard a PD 9245 and a ProSine 2.0 100a inverter charger, which the Honda is capable of powering either... But truth in fact, with 440w of roof-top solar, I seldom if ever bother with the generator, except for off-grid air conditioner (seldom used)...

3 tons

[MrWizard]

Putting all loads and all charging at one common point when batteries are physically banked together in the same spot, makes for accurate tracking of power out, and power in/charge, having loads on different connections/batteries split system, makes it harder to correctly monitor power used,
While voltage system wide will generally reach low point equilibrium, voltage is not the best way to judge SOC/capacity level AmpHrs used or available

[BFL13]

Lots of calculations can be made. One thing to remember is that with a 5er you can carry lots of batteries and a big portable gen to run a big amp charger, so you can take advantage of Li charging amps.

(But then I would say since you can carry all those FLAs why spend all that $ on LFP? Seems silly to me.)

With a TC, the first limit is the size of generator you can take along, if any. That can reduce the size of charging amps and whether an Li is "worth it"

And with the TC, you could have a battery space limit so LFP and SiO2 get you more AH in that small space. And then if it is a small TT so weight matters, then LFP beats SiO2, but if it is cold temps, then SiO2 beats LFP if you can carry the weight.

Each RVer has to use his brain and figure what would be best for him. Ignore the Elmer Gantry salesmen pushing the latest thing. 😞

[StirCrazy]

BFL13 wrote:


Some gen time advantage with SiO2 over regular AGMs is between 80-90 % where they stay constant amps before tapering around 90%, and that you can start the high rate constant amps from 20% instead of 50% (LFP can do that too) so no wasted gen time while amps taper if doing a "20-90"

except with the LFP batteries you can do that from empty to full and a lot higher current than SiO2 even. the curent charging restriction is why I am not concidering them, well and the price. I think that even with normal GC batteries if you have a big or multiple charge sources you can charge faster than SiO2, with a 25amp limitied charger that is all you can dump into it then of course it will charge faster than my LA, but if I am dumping 75 amp into my GC then I think Ill win the race. for me this is why the Li are more attractive. I can dump 150 amps into them from empty to full if you have that kind of charging. so realisticly say you have 75 am converter and a 30 amp solar set up you could fill a 280ah li back from empty in under around 2.5 hours. or for the people with gennys using for the 2 hour allowed time they could totaly fill there bank in that alotted time and not use the evening genny time. to me i think the capacity size and speed of refill are the teo morst important factors , well life also and Li blowes anything else out of the water for all three. even cost for Li is now the cheepest if you build it your self per/usable capacity.

Steve

Steve

[BFL13]

Our 5er had about 45 ft (one way) of #6 between battery and DC fuse panel and everything worked no problem. They went up and down via the ceiling, crazy way to do it 🙂

You might have 20 ft one way from right front of bed to say back of camper left side and up some, so you could use #8 wire for your amps (20ft red and 20 ft black)

You have to forgo proper balancing and use the OEM battery to take the load/charging wires and have the one in the truck bed as a "downstream battery" in parallel, but this is not a big deal with low amp draws.

The wiring can just go along the truck bed and the camper can sit on it, won't hurt anything.

You can toss the 27 in the front right and put in a pair of 6s if they will fit, and get some good AH.

The inverter wiring to the 27 up front might be too far to reach the OEM battery box with the other loads. I have "tapped" into a single 12v in a parallel set with the main loads on another of the 12s and it all worked. "They" say put all the load wires on the same battery posts but I am not sure why that is necessary. So you could leave the inverter on the pair of 6s IMO (others can comment on that if it is a bad thing-if they say why it is bad--)

[jaycocreek]

The problem I have connecting the external batteries(wheel well bats) to the house system is,the front drivers side wheel well is where they mounted the 7-pin trailer plug either for a TC or as fifth wheel and the rear is consumed by the bathroom..I did at one time wedge a group 24 in there so it would not move but it has sense run it's course in the battery world..All my room is on the passengers side, opposite side of the built in battery..

I did read about a guy that used a 100ah lithium as a stand alone for his compressor refer and charged it every day with his Yamaha gens set and a Noco genius 2600 that he said fully charged in less than two hours...I totally understand my '90's system is prehistoric compared to modern systems but I am on the fence in upgrading it as it is serving it's purpose as is which is mainly the water pump and lights.

Thanks for the replies as I try to soak it all in..LOL

[BFL13]

OP ignore! Mex online here so- Mex you missed your photo

https://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/30170825/srt/pd/pging/1.cfm

Ok, back to regular programming for the OP.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

The label on the converter.
3 amps charge rate?
Is this not a BW Magnatek buzzbox?
A ripple champipple noisemaker with giant resistor?

Leechcraft and Hemlock cummerbund grade technology?
The Arch Duke of battery destroyers?

Their only value was to hurl it out a window to twang a barking dog.