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When I bought my 78 micro mini Sunrider last fall the coach battery, a group 27 deep cycle marine, was located under the dinette bench along with an old power converter the previous owner had installed The battery was wired and getting juice from the engine battery but wasn't going through the isolator which he showed me was mounted under the hood near the empty battery tray where I assume the coach battery was intended to live. After doing a bit of research I just picked up a set of 6 V golf cart batteries to upgrade my coach battery capacity. Here is what I'm looking to do and I could use some advice from anyone who's got more experience with this stuff than me, which is probably most of you. Lol. I've now got the 2 6V batteries wired in series under the dinette bench making one 12 V combo. I'd like to move the marine deep cycle to the tray under the hood and have everything go through the isolator the way it should be to protect the engine battery . Does this make sense? What's the best way to wire it up so that I am drawing power from both the new 12v combo and the marine deep cycle or is it a bad idea having the two batteries far away from each other. Also, I haven't come across anything that looks like a power center. Any ideas where it would be located or even if these early models had a power center would be helpful. Thanks.

I bought my toy home just a few months ago. On my maiden voyage of 9k miles I ran into a ton of electrical challenges, including some battery issues. The previous owner had installed 3 80kW solar panels and a brand-new battery which worked great at keeping the house battery charged prior to setting out on the trip. Yay for boondocking! But when the temperatures started dropping in Missouri, the furnace fan would suck down the coach battery power. Then the battery didn't have enough juice to start the furnace leaving the home uncomfortably cold. I thought about adding another battery, but my instinct was that something was wrong. It wasn't immediately obvious, but I realized the isolator wasn't working. So I rigged up a little jumper to power both batteries from the alternator while driving. This got me comfortably through he rest of the trip and back home. When I could receive a delivery, I ordered a new Tekonsha 7000 12 Volt 3 Terminal Battery Isolator and installed it. A few days later I was trying to blow out the water lines in prep for winter using a compressor running off the house battery, but battery was dead despite 100 miles driven in the last 2 days. So I realized the new isolator wasn't working. After a little diagnostics with a multi-meter, the ignition input wire to the solenoid wasn't working. So I traced out that the wire was connected to a wire going to the windshield wiper motor. I immediately thought "Hmm, I'm not sure that will work." So I just turned on the wipers and voila! The isolator works! I now I have a spare isolator. And I realize my jumper solution probably put a ton of wear on the hood latch from opening the hood to connect and disconnect the jumper, every time I started or stopped the car for the majority of the trip... Oh well. I am now wondering if this simple mistaken wiring job is what caused the previous owner to add solar and the new battery, in the first place. Either way, glad to know all I need to do is drive in the rain so my house battery will be charged! ;-)

I have an 88 Sunrader with what appears to be a solenoid-based isolator setup (little cylinder that looks like the old Ford starter solenoids, four wire). My problem is that when it sits for weeks not being used, plugged into shore power, the chassis battery will be dead and I will have to jump start the vehicle. When I check voltages, running the engine charges both chassis and house batteries, but shore power charges only the house battery. Is this how it is supposed to work? If so, is there a workaround so that shore power also charges truck battery while still maintaining isolation when disconnected? If this is not how it is supposed to work, any suggestions on troubleshooting? I should add that about two years ago I was having a problem with the chassis battery discharging overnight. I took it to an auto electric shop, which told me that my radio was discharging the battery, disconnected it, and told me that I needed a new isolator (identical in appearance to the solenoid-like one that I had had before.) The one that they sold me looked just like the old one and I hooked it up. I have since reconnected the radio and do not have the problem with the chassis battery discharging overnight, so I think that they were full of it on that, just finding the minimal current that keeps memory going in the radio. Long story short, I am pretty confident that the isolator, being pretty new, is not faulty, not to say that it is hooked up right.