2014 ish Journey/Meridian Battery Compartment

[wahoonc]

Does anyone have a picture of their battery compartment WITHOUT the batteries in it? I am approaching coach battery replacement time and attempting to figure out what will fit other than the Group 31 AGM. I am looking at upgrading to LiFePo unfortunately you can only use 4 of those in parallel. I currently have 6 Group 31 AGM for a total of 630 amp hours. They make some larger batteries in 12 volt that are roughly twice the size of the Group 31 that should fit. IIRC they are 230 ah per unit, the upgrade in usable power would be awesome.

Thanks
Aaron

[creativepart]

Aaron, I just upgraded from 2-200 amp hour Renogy LFP batteries to one 460 amp hour Epoch LFP battery. The Epoch is only slightly larger than one previous Renogy battery even though it’s more than twice the capacity.

One of my Renogy batteries died and they refunded my money. I didn’t want another Renogy.

I have room for two of these but don’t need 920 amp hours.

You might check them out, they have Bluetooth, low temp cutoff and built in heaters and a 10-yr warranty. Here’s the one I’m using.

https://www.epochbatteries.com/produ...och-essentials

[wahoonc]

Do you have any problems starting the generator? For some reason, several of the LiFePo batteries tell you not to use them as engine-starting batteries.
Also did you put in a DC/DC charger on the alternator circuit to keep from burning that up?

Thanks
Aaron

[creativepart]

I don’t have any issues starting the generator, but I think my coach uses the chassis battery to start the generator. This varies with different models but it was just a wire on the chassis side disconnect relay. I’d think if yours was wired to the house solenoid you could move it. But I doubt it is.

I did disconnect the alternator charging and installed a D2D charger, but since I have 300w of solar I don’t find it all that much of a benefit. If I leave one campground with low batteries the solar does a good job charging the batteries back up while I drive. I think of the D2D charger as a backup device.

I did need to add an Amp-L-Start to keep the chassis battery charged when camped for more than a couple of days.

If I had to do it all over again I would just replace the OEM BIM with a LI-BIM and skipped the D2D charger and the Amp-L-Start.

Even though we don’t dry camp all that often I find the LFP batteries to be a game changer.