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Trailer breakaway battery not charging7/12/2023 Now I am getting that nagging feeling again. 2 days later I decided to check it out and sure enough it was dead again.īeing pressed for time and low on cash, I swapped the battery with the RV marine battery from my camper to the trailer and added a power wire to keep it topped off. I charged it with my regular car charger overnight and the next day it was 12 volts. I took it out and tested the voltage and found it was low. Last spring when I took the trailer out to get it road ready, I tested the breakaway and found the battery is dead. It came with a dinky little battery in a tiny box. The article is written for Caravan World Magazine.I have a 2 year old going on 3 years 16 ft landscape trailer with a breakaway system. The battery may have gone flat over winter (non-use period) and it will take several hours to trickle charge from the car AUX line – no good if you have a decoupling event 1 hour after leaving home.Ĭhecking your safety devices should form part of all good trip preparation. In your case if you have wired this correctly it should be maintained but many RVers just plug it into their car and think that this will be fine. Don’t also forget to also check that the switch device on the drawbar is operational and not damaged, and that the battery is fully charged before you leave. In summary, it is great that you are managing this safety critical device properly. This will be the same terminal where the solar is connected. The negative must be connected on the non-battery side of the shunt to measure all the current correctly. In the Setec ST-III setup you will most likely have the Drifter display inside your van so you will need to ensure that you are wiring correctly through the shunt if you decide to wire directly to the battery. If in doubt – replace with a new and fully charged battery. To work effectively the batteries in these units must be carefully maintained and tested regularly. This is twice the capacity of the actual battery so in the case of an emergency it will be extracting current at 2C (rated capacity/amps required). By the time you include the brake lights as well it could be up to approximately 13-14 Amps. A dual axle caravan with 4 electric brakes drums will draw approximately 6amps for each pair of brakes. Having it properly charged is critical as it needs to be fully charged to be able to operate effective in case of emergency. The Breaksafe contains a 12v lead acid battery which is only 7ahr in capacity. They should switch off automatically once the battery is fully charged. They do not charge a battery very quickly but are appropriate where you don’t want to be left with a flat battery after having you caravan in storage for a long period of time. Trickle chargers are used to maintain batteries over a long period of time. However, if you were to charge directly from the caravan house battery it would have the same effect as charging from the vehicle assuming the solar panels are keeping the voltage on the battery at the upper levels.Īs the Breaksafe has a built-in trickle charger you should be able to expect that it would not allow current to drain back to the larger caravan house battery and that the inbuilt circuit would have a reverse diode inbuilt or equivalent circuitry to prevent this. In regard to charging this device it is recommended to either charge from the vehicle line or from a 240v charger. Your responsibility extends to other road users to whom this device could potentially be life saving for in the face of a decoupled oncoming caravan. If you had a flat tyre on your van you would certainly fix it! “Out of sight, out of mind” is no excuse. Where these devices are legally required to be installed, care should be taken to ensure that they are properly maintained. As mentioned in previous articles it does concern us when we observe out there in the “real” world that many caravanners do ensure that the battery on their Breaksafe is properly maintained. Glad to see that you are one of the few who does pay attention to the safety devices installed on your van. Would I need a diode between the house battery and the BrakeSafe battery to prevent discharging the BrakeSafe battery when free camping? 12V Guru answers: The BrakeSafe battery is charged via a 220V plugpack when on mains power but is not charged at all when in storage for most of the year.Īfter reading the answer about charging a BrakeSafe battery published in issue 591, I wondered whether it would be safe to connect the BrakeSafe battery charge input to my caravan house battery instead of the car 12v. My Jayco van battery is charged with a Setec ST-III power supply when on mains power and a solar panel when in storage.
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