The headlights were left on in my Regal for at least 2 weeks and completely drained the battery. I put a charger on for a day and the battery reads a little over 13 volts. When I turn the ignition key nothing happens, not even a click. Occasionally the radio, which I assume is powered by the chassis, battery, will have enough power for a visual display.

The positive cable looked a little corroded so I cut the end off to get to clean wire and replaced the terminal clamp.

I think the ground cable is working properly as I tested voltage of house battery by connecting multimeter to positive terminal and the disconnected ground cable for the chassis battery. Voltage read fully charged.

Although my coach has an auxiliary start, that does not seem to have any effect.

Could I have fried something by completely draining battery, is there a fuse that I'm overlooking, or any other ideas?

Thanks for any input.

My idea has nothing to do with the dead battery [I think] but you might begin checking the other end of the cables, i.e. the terminal on the starter and the ground to the frame. A tap on the solinoid and starter might jolt it enough to turn the starter, but if it does don't plan on it lasting long. Another thing a shadetree mechanic might try is crossing the terminals on the solinoid. Not recommended unless you know what you're doing, to easy to fry something,[like a ring on your finger ]. Others?

The battery may be toast but first I would try an old fashioned jump start. If you hook up the good battery and all the lights come on, engines starts, etc then you know the coach is OK and the battery or the battery post connections are bad. If a jump start is not easy then swap in a known good battery.

Leaving a battery dead and connected may have sulfated it to death. Leave it on the charger for a few days.. watch and see what happens, it may revive.

I wasn't able to jump start it. I'm thinking that maybe the ground isn't good. I had my son pull out the slide and top off the water in the battery. He indicated that it needed very little. The prior owner had put the battery in backwards so the ground cables, there are two black wires coming off the negative terminal, are short and may have been pulled when the battery slide was pulled out.

The starter was replaced prior to bringing the coach home when I purchased it in October.

There appears to be some questionable wiring behind the battery compartment. There is a 30 amp fuse connector mounted to the back side of the compartment but it has no wires. I'm wondering if this might be where the auxilary start components are.

On my Regal the aux start is a large relay mounted on the frame adjacent to the starter. One of the cables runs from the coach batteries to the relay the other is piggyback on the starter solenoid terminal.

I used my aux start so rarely that I ended up removing the extra jumper to the solenoid when I removed the starter last summer. The extra cable made it more difficult to install the starter. A single good starting battery has been enough every time, so far down to about 25 degrees.

Definitely check the grounds. Mine has separate grounds for the start battery, the starter itself and the engine block. All were crusty when I checked them. They may have voltage while sitting but under load the voltage may be dropping out.

Ah the mysteries of Barth wiring... that seems to be one area where the coaches vary greatly. Good luck on your hunt!

One project you might consider is wiring your headlights so that the ignition has to be on for the headlights to be on. The original owner of my Breakaway did that and so I leave the headlight switch in the on position all the time.

quote:

Originally posted by Boonton Jim:
I wasn't able to jump start it.

What did it do when you tried to "jump start" it. did it do the same thing as when you tried with just the coach batteries?

Where did you attach the jumper cables?

What size jumper cables did you use?

Lot of questions but lets try to figure out why it isn't starting before we add to the confusion of how and what is changed or not there.

Many times when a battery(ies) have been completely run down and people use light gauge jumper cables, it still will not start because there is too much current being drawn thru the jumper cables, therefore it will not start. You may have to wait for 10-15 minutes for the heavy current that a full discharged battery will draw before trying to start.

If the jumper cables were attached to the coach batteries and then there still was no click or anything, then sure check all the connections, including the jumper cable clamps to assure that the high current needed for the starter will be there.

Have you tried the head lights during this? If the head lights come on and stay on even thou the starter will not crank then you definitely have a connection problem between the batteries and the starter or a defective starter.

If the head lights go out when the starter is engaged, then you have a connection issue probably at the batteries or the connection of the battery cables to the coach system. You may even have a battery cable that has been compromised ans is no longer of handling the high current to the starter.

It did work before the batteries were drained so there should be nothing wrong with any of the circuits other than main battery connections.

We can get to the other issues after you get it starting.

I used good quality jumper cables and there was no difference. I also hooked battery cables up to one of the house batteries which I know are good since they can start the generator. Again, no change.

The two grounds look good. One goes directly to the frame and the other goes to the engine block.

I think it may be the positive connection at the starter which I'll check next. It seems strange that I had no symptoms until I let the battery drain.

Just to clarify, I do not have any power anywhere that runs from the chassis battery.

Turns out the problem was loose positive wires at the starter. It must have just been a coincidence that the problem first showed any signs after I let the battery drain.

I had assumed that this was not likely the cause as prior to my purchase in October I had a new starter professionally installed by an RV shop in Toledo. I see what Steve VW means about the Aux Start wires making it hard to install the starter. The wires were noticably loose when the starter was bolted up but seemed tight when I dropped the starter down for access to the wires.

I assume this is the Aux Start solenoid

http://i687.photobucket.com/al...upload/AuxStart1.jpg

Thanks for everyone's input.

Yep, that looks a lot like mine. I got tired of fighting the extra wire to the solenoid and just disconnected both ends and removed it. Haven't needed it for 2 years yet... the relay remains as only a connection point. Eventually I might run a new cable from batteries to isolator and bypass it entirely.

(One of these days I'm going to put in a similar relay to replace my diode battery isolator. I'll use the panel switch and wiring to control when the chassis batteries are charging from the V8, but that's the topic of a new thread in the future!)

Glad you found the problem!