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Which Battery Is the Auxiliary in my Sunrader?


acemanhattan

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My father passed away recently and my brother and I have inherited a few vehicles we need to move out of his storage unit. One is a mid-80s Sunrader that has sat for 3-6 months, which appears to have drained the batteries.

 

I'm not much of a mechanic, but I reason that his Sunrader probably has 2 12 volt batteries under the hood because one acts as a starting battery, and the other runs the electronics...or something.

 

Because I think the batteries might need to be replaced, I'd like to figure out which one is critical to starting, so I don't have to buy two. 

 

The general configuration is one battery in front of each headlight. If it's of any consequence or consistent with something an intelligent person would do if they were not planning on taking any trips soon, the positive cable was disconnected on the driver's side battery.

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Your truck starting battery is the one on the passenger side. It hasn't been sitting for years so I would try having the battery charged first. Any auto parts store can test it and charge. You could take both of them. Just don't get them mixed up because the driver side one should be a deep cycle, not a starting battery.  So sorry about your Dad. Just so you know Sunraders can be quite valuable. 

Linda S 

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1 hour ago, linda s said:

Your truck starting battery is the one on the passenger side. It hasn't been sitting for years so I would try having the battery charged first. Any auto parts store can test it and charge. You could take both of them. Just don't get them mixed up because the driver side one should be a deep cycle, not a starting battery.  So sorry about your Dad. Just so you know Sunraders can be quite valuable. 

Linda S 

 

Thanks, Linda. I had a feeling it might be important to track which was which, so I left myself some instructions about the configuration as I found it.

 

I just took the batteries to AutoZone and they confirmed that they're totally dead (I guess this is why my charger wasn't working), but that they should still work with a charge, so I left it with them for pick-up later today.

 

As an aside, is there a reason someone would remove the positive cable from the auxiliary battery when not in use?

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13 minutes ago, acemanhattan said:

As an aside, is there a reason someone would remove the positive cable from the auxiliary battery when not in use?

 

Just a guess but maybe it was disconnected to keep the old charge/converter from cooking the aux battery when hooking up the AC long periods. These old converters do not have current limiting that automatically reduces the voltage when capacity is reached.

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