RussnSue

[rant] Sounds like another one of those "if it saves one life it will be worth it" Government ideals that will cost us all and achieve very little. Truthfully, you will just as easily see defects in an extension lead by having a good long look at it each time you plug it in. Crush marks, cuts in the insulation, frayed ends, melting signs inside the clear plug-ends etc aren't hard to see. Not only that, but with the mandatory fitment of RCD's these days it is difficult to imagine a scenario where one could get electrocuted. But, if the Qld Gov't has mandated it, then it's off to the electrician you go. I wonder why they only insist on the extension lead being tested? If they are dinkum they should have every appliance in the van tested as well, just as they do in workplaces. [/rant] Cheers Russ

G'day Alan We've used it for three years now, with no ill effects on seals etc. I fact, I forgot to empty the tank at the end of our last trip and only remembered two months later. I wasn't looking forward to that job I can tell you, but all was fine. No bad smells and the seals and tank are no worse for wear. Cheers Russ

Hello Alan The connection you refer to is best described like this: There is a connection from the battery -Ve to the Solar Regulator. This is the connection through which the Solar Regulator charges the battery. The current flowing through this connection is measured internally by the Solar Regulator. The other connection from the battery -Ve goes to the shunt. Everything connected to the other side of the shunt is either supplying current to, or drawing current from, the battery. The shunt measures the net current flow, either in or out of the battery, and relays the information (in my case) to the Solar Regulator. The Solar Regulator then sums the internal and external (shunt) current flows to get an accurate picture of the battery status. In your case, you would need to take a different approach because you use the LinkLITE to monitor your system. You will need to have every source or demand of current connected to one side of the shunt and the battery connected to the other side. Under these circumstances the LinkLITE will be appraised of the net current flow to or from your battery and should be able to accurately show the SOC. Any readings, other than the voltages and output current, shown on your Solar Regulator will be inaccurate and meaningless. If you are going to fit a DC to DC charger (I wouldn't*), then its output will also connect to the opposite side of the shunt from the battery connection. * In my opinion, the best approach to getting sufficient current to the battery in the van, when using the vehicle alternator, is to use very heavy cables that minimise Volt drop. Teamed with some form of low voltage cutout device at the vehicle battery end, this is as simple as it gets. No further electronics to go wrong. I use this method and the batteries are like new after almost four years. The car's cranking battery lasted five years, so there was no detrimental effect to using a straight-through system as far as I can see. Additionally, in this straight-through setup, the van battery bank can be used to run accessories in the vehicle (such as a car fridge) or to even back-charge the car battery, when the car is not running. Batteries are actually more forgiving than they are made out to be and the use of expensive and fault-prone gizmos can be avoided by keeping this in mind. Cheers Russ

Hi, can someone who participates explain to me, in layman's terms, just what geocaching is, what the objectives are and why it interests them? I've had a bit of a look at a couple of web sites but I have to say that I'm none the wiser about it. I know that there is a cache at the lookout here at Cossack but I haven't bothered to look for it. I suppose I should have a sticky-beak, but to be honest, I don't even know what to look for. I'm assuming that it will be some sort of trinket box under a rock or two. Cheers Russ

G'day Laurie We are getting a little off topic here but never mind. I also thought about carrying less water but in the end decided that to use the Kedron for what we bought it for, that is, going on the roads less travelled to the places less stayed, would require us to carry all the water we can. So far I have opted to do away with our bicycles, leave the generator behind (along with the jerry can of fuel that we also carry for it), change the batteries for lighter ones, no longer carry spare oil and coolant for the car (we have lugged ten kilos of each in the front boot of the van for five years and never used a drop), carry fewer tools, leave the Cobb Cooker behind (our BBQ can do anything the Cobb can do), carry fewer paper books and use the iPad instead and lastly, carry less tinned food and long-life milk (we always carry way more than we would ever need, even in an emergency). Doing all of that will get us to within a few Kilos of where we need to be. Worst case, if we get pulled over by the Mermaids, we can then drop some water or blow off a gas cylinder. If I need to, I will also move one of the two water tanks that are forward of the axles and relocate it behind the axles. I should have weighed the Kedron when we took delivery. At least then I would have been aware of these issues and done something about them sooner. It scares me to think that we have been so over weight for so long (even the car is overweight by virtue of the excessive ball weight.) In the early days we used to carry even more stuff than we do now, so it is not beyond the realms of possibility that we were half a tonne over. It has given me an even greater respect for our beloved Disco 3 and its tiny 2.7 Litre engine. To get this thread back on track, I intend to publish the whole process of changing over the batteries, along with a critique of how they perform, so that other Kedron owners can use the information to decide what they will do once their AGM batteries reach the end of their life-cycle. It will be a "warts and all" exposé so that others can learn from any problems that I may encounter. Cheers Russ

G'day Brian If I could have just moved the four AGMs, I would have. Unfortunately, the weight issues I have don't stop at the 650 Kg on the ball. Overall the van is 330 Kg overweight when packed to travel. So I have to shed the 330 Kg as well as move weight aft. Trust me, I wouldn't spend the money if I didn't have to, but I just can't trim enough weight without changing out the batteries. I'm also pretty convinced that if other Top Ender owners take the trouble to weigh their vans they might also be in for a bit of a shock. Cheers Russ

G'day David You are asking the very same questions that I asked of the LiFePO4 suppliers. In essence, they sell a pre-packed 90 AH battery in a single package (made up of four cells, obviously.) They do not have battery monitoring or charge regulating control boards. The stipulation is that the charging device must be programmable so that at no time does it charge at a voltage higher than 14.4 Volts. On the discharge side of the equation I will be buying an off-the-shelf battery cut-off device that can be set to 12.4 Volts. All of the suppliers I have contacted agree that keeping the battery voltages within those limits will result in long cell life. Both my solar regulator and my battery charger can be set-up to comply with the upper voltage limit. That said, because I can place the individual cells in pretty much any physical shape that I want in the space that I have, I might still go the whole hog and use cell monitors for each cell and run a series and parallel configuration to achieve 12 Volts and about 360 AH capacity. Either way, the cost will be much the same. If I go down the pre-packed route, I will be using 4 x 90 AH batteries which will give me a usable capacity of about 280 AH. I currently have 4 x 120 AH AGMs that I don't like to discharge more than 25% - 30%, so I effectively get only 120 AH - 160 AH of usable capacity from those. There are better prices around but over all there would only 5% in it. Cheers Russ

G'day Alan In Float mode the charger should be supplying the same current to the batteries as is being used by your appliances. This is exactly what "Floating" is. As long as you have Sun, you can keep the batteries on Float without affecting the State of Charge. If you lose Sun for any reason, the voltage of your batteries will start to drop. The Xantrex allows for this by checking after one hour and if the battery voltage is below the nominal Float voltage it will switch to either Boost or Absorption mode in readiness for when you next get enough Sun to charge again. Without looking into the manual for the unit, I can't say for sure whether any other triggers apply to change the mode from Float to one of the charging modes. By this I mean that there may be a hysteresis curve that the unit uses that will override the one hour timer and change mode at a set voltage. Either way, I wouldn't stress about it. If you lose Sun, you lose Sun....and you can't do anything about it. So long as you are aware that your batteries are discharging and keep a casual eye on them, you won't have any issues. If that means turning the telly off an hour earlier, then it's no biggy. Just an aside: I am in the process of ordering some new batteries for my van. I am going to remove the AGM batteries and them with Lithium batteries, specifically LiFePO4 (Lithium-Iron-Polymer). These batteries weigh about a third of the weight of Lead batteries, for batteries of matching usable capacity. Where they differ is that they can be discharged a lot deeper without any significant shortening of their life. Typically these batteries can be discharged 80% (20% capacity remaining) which means that as long as you have the capability of recharging them again, you can have smaller, lighter batteries and still get the same amount of usable power from them. This change is not driven by the need to change the AGM batteries because they are at the end of their lifetime....they aren't. It is driven by the revelation that my towball weight is 650 Kg! Not only will I be swapping the batteries but I will also be mounting the new ones under the seats of the café lounge, behind the axles. Being able to discharge them deeper will just be an added bonus. The downside is that it is going to cost $2000.00 to correct a weight distribution issue with the van that shouldn't be there in the first place. Cheers Russ

G'day Alan All Lead-Acid batteries deteriorate when discharged. Some less so than others. The depth of discharge of 25% (State of Charge 75%) is an arbitrary figure I choose to aim for to get the maximum life from my AGM batteries. AGM, Gell Cell and other "deep cycle" batteries can tolerate deeper discharges but their life does shorten more the deeper the discharge is - it's just that they will outlast wet cell batteries discharged the same amount. So, the more effective your battery management, the longer any kind of battery will last. The table of Volts Vs State of Charge that I published earlier is just a guide. If (and it is a big if) your regulator is correctly wired amd ALL ingoing and outgoing current flows are measured, then the state of charge as displayed should be spot on. The problem arises when charge current from the 240 Volt charger or the car's alternator is not calculated by the LinkLITE. An erroneous reading will result. From the figures you have supplied, the Xantrex is doing the job. It is allowing the battery voltage to rise above the Float voltage for a while during charging, before dropping back to 13.6 V on Float. This is exactly what it should be doing. Reseting the LinkLITE at the exact moment that the batteries go from the Absorption stage to the Float Stage will give you a State of Charge that is as near as dammit correct. The long and short of it is: If you have 12.5 Volts in the morning, just before solar charging starts, then you are in pretty good shape - especially given that it is almost winter and the number of hours of effective charging that you can expect in a day is around 2 hours less than in summer time. About what time of the day are your batteries going into Float mode? It may be that the angle of the Sun is such that the panels can't quite provide you with enough energy, later in the day, to completely finish the Absorption stage and the regulator is forced to drop back to Float mode because of this. This isn't anything to worry about unless you start getting "morning" voltages a fair bit lower than you are presently. Cheers Russ

G'day Reece In a former lifetime I used to drive that road five or six times per month, year in, year out. The condition of the road does not change dramatically with seasonal conditions and it is also generally well maintained. The section from the North West Coastal Highway through to Lyndon Station is wide, mostly flat and usually quite smooth - just take care at grids and river crossings. One tip: If you keep your eye out on the left hand side, about 15 Km from the NWCH end you will see a communications tower. Once you draw level with it keep an eye on your odometer and about 25 - 30 Km further down the road you will see another tower on the right hand side. As you start to draw level with it, watch the road carefully. There are a series of Whoopdy Doo's that can catch you unawares and have caused vehicles to roll over. They aren't big, but they are spaced such that your spring-bounce can get amplified each time you go over one. The road that cuts across to Mangaroon Station is a bit narrow in places and has at least two hairpin bends on it, so watch out for those. It can also be a bit rutted at times. One or two of the creek crossings (at the Lyndon end) can get a bit soft, but shouldn't stop you. As always, drive according to the conditions. You are probably aware that Barradale , the servo, no longer exists, so you might need to take on fuel at Nanutarra, where they practice robbery without violence. Have a great trip. Cheers Russ

Hi Michael It has been a couple of years since we did the Plenty, so this probably won't be a great help but.... The Plenty is the only road that has ever caused damage to our Top Ender. One of the kitchen drawer latches broke and the drawer then bounced around the van until we stopped and checked things. So, the Plenty certainly had its moments back then and I suspect it still does. Just follow the usual advice and air-down your tyres and drive slowly. We realise now that we didn't stop often enough to check for damage and we do that a lot more often when on crappy roads. Cheers Russ

G'day John No worries mate. I see no technical errors in anything that we have written to this forum. All that I see in this particular thread are two blokes offering two different approaches to the same problem. By all accounts, both systems work and it is simply a matter of those reading this thread to decide which method suits their particular requirements. Nothing wrong with having options! Look forward to catching up with you someday. If you drop into Cossack, you can find Sue and/or I by asking at the kiosk, or going to the office (located in the old Police Barracks.) Sue and I make up the entire population of Cossack, so we aren't hard to find Cheers Russ

Hi again Brian Yes, modern chargers are intelligent but they can't make something from nothing. Most modern chargers are multiple-stage and by this I mean that they will charge the batteries at certain voltages and currents until set criteria are reached. The three stages are boost, absorption and float. In the boost stage, all the charge current available is used to charge the battery. As the battery charges, its voltage rises. When the voltage reaches the boost maximum voltage and remains there for a predetermined time, the controller will automatically advance to the absorption stage. In this state, the charger tries to keep the battery voltage constant while the last part of the battery charging occurs. This prevents excessive gassing which occurs at high cell voltages. The float stage basically sees the input current match the output current. The important thing here is the boost stage. If your batteries really could use 30 Amps for this stage to be applied correctly and your charger is only a 30 Amp charger, then the charger simply cannot do both (boost the batteries and supply the load in the van) effectively. Something has to give. If, on the other hand, you have a 60 Amp charger, then you have some headroom available to you. The manual for your charger will have its maximum output current listed in the specification section. If your battery charger is not a high capacity charger, then the 240VAC to 12VDC can be used to run the load while the charger does its job. On the other hand, you could always upgrade the battery charger, rather than get another 240VAC to 12VDC unit and have one less fan running in the boot. Cheers Russ

G'day Batteries and battery charging are interesting subjects that always elicit a lot of useful information. I am a career "DC" person and have been working with batteries all of my life. I have come to the conclusion that lead-acid (including AGM and other "deep cycle" variants) and lead-calcium batteries are generally very forgiving and are often subjected to far more TLC than they actually deserve. Over the years I have also come to the conclusion that simple is best. This has been reflected in the system that I now have for my vehicle and van.... In my vehicle I have the cranking battery and an auxiliary battery. Between them is a manual switch that either isolates them or joins them together. When I'm driving I connect them together. When I'm parked up for the night I disconnect them. Everything I have fitted to the vehicle, post-manufacture, is connected to the auxiliary battery. This includes GPS, two-way radio, phones and chargers, laptops, car fridge extra lights etc. The aux battery is a lead-acid wet cell. From the aux. battery I have wired very heavy cabling to the rear of the vehicle where the car fridge is located. This cabling continues on to the Anderson plug on the rear bumper. I upgraded the cabling from the batteries of the van to the Anderson plug that connects to the car so that I have heavy cabling throughout. When parked up I have a length of heavy cable that I connect from the van to the car. In other words, the van and the car are always connected unless we are off in the car somewhere. At night the van batteries help the car aux. battery run the car fridge and other stuff. When driving, the alternator helps out with the van batteries. That's it! Nothing else. I don't care that the aux. battery is not an AGM battery and I don't care whether the charging regime is "not ideal" voltage-wise. We are only talking poofteenths of a Volt in most cases. The car battery and the auxiliary battery were both changed out in December after five years of service in very arduous conditions. You've got to be happy with that! The van batteries are as good as new four years on. The only thing I ever worry about is not discharging the batteries too deeply. I never worry too much about how much current the alternator is delivering to my batteries either. The Sun is still shining as we drive along and that's what solar panels are for. I personally do not see a need for any form of DC-DC charger, nor do I see a need to run and inverter to charger batteries. All of these things have their own in-built losses and result in the Law of Diminishing Returns being invoked. That said, when someone can come up to me five years down the track and tell me that their auxiliary battery is still as good as new because they've been using one of these buggery boxes, I will happily concede. Just my 2 cents worth. Cheers Russ

G'day Brian I removed my 240VAC to 12VDC unit years ago. It's still in my shed if you really want one, but why bother? The main thing you need to consider is that if your batteries are low (say after an extended cloudy period) and you turn on your 240 Volt charger, will it have the capacity to charge the batteries at a decent rate AND provide enough current to supply the van load at the same time? I have a 60 Amp charger and I'm satisfied that this is enough capacity for such an eventuality. Having said that, in all the time that we've had our van we have never been in a situation where we've not had enough sunlight to keep us going. Your call, but for my money the failed unit is an unnecessary piece of redundancy that is not required. Cheers Russ

Hi Alan, yes, the Xantrex unit is the solar regulator in your case. It also seems that the only problem that you may have had before was shade on the panels. We get very strange looks when we pull up at campsites and park right out in the full Sun. People think that we're nuts, but we are completely self-sufficient when it comes to power. So much so, that we are going to sell our generator because we just don't use it. Cheers Russ

G'day Alan I'm thinking that Tom may be confusing himself with his reply. If you connect panels in series, then the output voltage is a multiple of 12 Volts times the number of panels that you have installed. In your case it would be 36 Volts and that is just not what Kedron do. As your system is a twelve Volt system, it MUST be wired in parallel. Perhaps Tom means that the connections to the panels are all commoned together at the roof, with a single positive and a single negative lead coming down to the boot, as opposed to three positives and three negatives (one for each panel) going down into the boot? Either way, the panels are paralleled but the latter method would have less Volt-drop between the panels and the regulator (given that the same sized cable were used in either scenario.) To answer your question, a series connection is the one where the whole system is brought down by the weakest link in the chain as opposed to a parallel system where individual panels can be out of service without totally losing current to your regulator. It is irrelevant in your case because I can guarantee you that your system will be wired in parallel (one way or the other.) When it comes to panels, if one panel is in full Sun, and the Sun is directly overhead, then in an ideal World it should be possible to see about 10 Amps being delivered to the regulator. In the real world you should see at least seven Amps. What may be happening is that the Regulator thinks that the batteries are fully charged and is limiting the charge, or the panel that is in full Sun is not delivering as much current as it should be. If it is the latter I would start looking for a blob of bird poo on the panel, a build-up of dust or something similar. You may need to see an Auto Electrician and have a few things tested. I would start with the batteries, followed by checking the configuration of the solar regulator, followed by open circuit voltage tests of each panel, followed by current measurements of each panel under ideal charging conditions (best done by connecting to a battery that is already somewhat discharged and will draw full current when connected). If you were seeing three Amps of charge current, no discharge current and your batteries still went flat, it would seem that the batteries are U/S. This can happen for a variety of reasons including: Discharging too deeply too often; Not charging the batteries at all when the van is in storage (causes sulphation): Individual dropped cells within batteries and so on. Individual cells can fail by going short circuit, or by going open circuit. In the latter case it results in the battery being completely dead and in the former case the battery thinks it is now a 10 Volt battery, not a 12 Volt battery (which is very bad because the regulator still thinks it is 12 Volts and the end result is that the five remaining cells in the battery have their voltages raised well above tolerable levels.) You scenario doesn't sound good but I can't be of much more help without getting my hands on your van, or some readouts being made available, sorry. Who knows, it might be something as simple as a bit of bird poo? Cheers Russ.

This is good to hear. I have heard not-so-glowing reports from vanners whom have already fitted the mod kits and it made me think twice about going to the trouble. I purchased the furry worms from Bunnings years ago in anticipation of doing the job but procrastinated after hearing those bad reports. Cheers Russ

G'day, The introduction of the VAST system is more complex than plugging in a decoder and displaying the end result on a TV. With the introduction of digital TV it was clear that many of the self-help TV transmitters and translators in rural areas would not be upgraded to digital. This would mean that many areas that formally had TV coverage would no longer have it post-2013. Other things also came into play. The Aurora satellite service is also due to switch off at around the same time and the free-to-air TV stations lobbied the Government to ensure that they maintained market share. The VAST system was selected because the channels that the end-user can receive can be strictly controlled. One way of doing this is to link the smart-card to the decoder in which it should be working. It is ironic that the plethora of freely available forged or bogus smart-cards that plagued the pay TV satellite services was front and foremost in the Government/bureaucratic decision to tighten the security of the service. The Government and by extension, we taxpayers, are subsidising the service and they had to come up with a scheme that would satisfy the free-to-air providers to keep them on board. That is why there will be different levels of access to the VAST system depending upon where you live. In theory, you should only be able to get the suite of channels that you currently do now, along with their digital "extra channels". If it was a free-for-all and you could get any channel from anywhere in Australia, then the advertising revenues of smaller, regional networks would be threatened - and perhaps even some of the capital city networks would suffer this as well. For example, why would someone in WA wait for channel 7 to put Friday night footy on at 8:30 PM when they could switch to a Victorian Channel 7 and watch it Live? Time shifting, especially to another timezone can mean loss of revenues. The free-to-air providers were never going to run with a situation like that. As a traveller you can sign a declaration that will enable you to pick up the full gamut of channels for one State. If you cross borders you can notify them and change the allowed channels to those of the new State that you are in. So, the bureaucrats came up with VAST, including the propriety decoder, to satisfy the FTA networks, stave off card counterfeiting and ensure that there are no black-spots in Australia after 2013. The fact that they aren't allowing other decoders to be used is largely due to the dickheads that cheated the system in the past. Competitive forces are coming into play and I have noticed a decline in VAST decoder prices over time. In the scheme of things, we should be happy to get such an excellent quality service for what is still a pretty cheap price. Cheers Russ

Answer 1: When we picked up our van we thought the air con was very noisy. The guys at the Kedron factory said it was normal. During our shakedown trip we had many visitors and they also thought that the air con was noisy. We went back to the factory after the shakedown trip and complained that it was very noisy. They investigated and found that something which was spinning inside the unit was hitting the cowling. A quick adjustment fixed it. Answer 2: The noise of the fan is considerably louder than you would expect to hear from, say, a split system in a house. It has to be in order to move enough air with a fan compact enough to fit in a pretty small space. So, the noise you are hearing may be quite normal for a caravan air con. Maybe you need to sidle up to a few people in a caravan park and have a listen to theirs for a comparison? One thing I can tell you is that you do become used to the amount of noise that it makes. We actually turn ours on to add "white noise" when we are staying at a caravan park and our "neighbours" are partying. You can't hear the partying over the white noise of the air con. One night we were parked on the front verge of our Daughter's house. We had the air con on and failed to hear one of our Daughter's drunken mates run over the water meter with her car, nor did we hear the commotion that ensued, nor did we hear the plumber come to try and fix it, nor did we hear the man from the Water Authority come and change the meter! The first thing I knew of it was when I awoke in the morning and noticed all of the water lying around and the shiny new meter sticking up out of the ground. The meter was no more than three metres from the van. I love the noise our airconditioner makes! Cheers Russ

No worries Rick. I'll give you a call tomorrow. Cheers Russ

G'day Gary & Kaye I'll back up Sue on this one. We, too, live in the Northwest and decided to buy a cover for the van. It wasn't a cheapie, but it lasted just 18 months. While the Sun did eventually cause it to fall apart, it was the tearing of the cover on any sharpish edge at all that did the most damage. The corners of the solar panels were the worst offenders, along with the TV antenna, NextG antenna, radio antenna, yada, yada. I doubt that we'll bother to get another one. Cheers Russ

G'day Rick, it is the 2.4KVA, purchased specifically because it will run the aircon. Cheers Russ

Thank you for the reply Alan. I look forward to receiving the info from you. I spoke to another Kedron owner just a few days ago and his ball-weight was over 500 Kg! It certainly seems to be an issue. Cheers Russ