Maintenance day in Bendigo.

Tuesday 29th April.

One item of concern that we have with the Winnebago is that of the charge life of the twin 110amp hour "house" batteries. Theoretically after a day of travel the vehicle alternator should charge these batteries to somewhere in the range 13.6 to 13.8 volts. We have observed however that these batteries only seem to get to a maximum of 13.2 volts. The impact of this is that the minimum voltage of around 12.6 volts required to effectively power our 300 watt 240 volt inverter is reached relatively quickly.

I have checked the power requirements for both the Foxtel set top box and the TV set and neither of these should not be draining the batteries.

So, while we are in the "big smoke" of Bendigo it seemed appropriate to visit an auto electrician and have the batteries and charge rate checked out. End result; the batteries are ok, but there is a huge voltage drop between the alternator and the batteries because of the light wire used, so the batteries are not fully charging.

The fix is to rewire with heavier duty cable which will be carried out tomorrow so we decided to spend another night in the area. Our decision to take this course of action means that we should have everything in order before moving into remote areas, also the weather is currently lousy, rain all day so not very pleasant for either sight seeing or travelling.

We did mange a visit to the Bendigo Woolen Mills where Gail picked up a bargain in the wool line.

It is still raining as I write this so hopefully a fine day tomorrow when we plan to travel on to Horsham after the auto electrician fix.