Dead truck batteries

[Bdold]

I'm not an electrical engineer.

The truck- 2003- Ram 2500- Diesel - 2 batteries 875CCA- each

Recently, my truck has had a few "slow" starts. This morning it was dead. I had not run it for 13 days.

Some things I did this summer:
I installed a solar system. 85 watt panel, with a charge controller. I cannot image the solar panel would cause me any issues.

I replaced the battery separator due to a recall. Today, I put the charger on one of the batteries and took the dog for a walk. An hour later, I put my hand on the battery separator and noticed it was warm. I used my volt meter and checked the green ground wire( red lead) and the black lead was placed on the negative side of the battery. I was getting 12.6? volts. I checked all three prongs on the back of the battery separator and they had the same voltage. When replacing it this summer, I connected this as a ground like it was installed in 2010.

Also, this summer, I hooked up my fog lights with a Bosch relay. I originally found a power slot in the fuse box that was hot all the time. This was annoying, in that, I would sometimes leave the lights on when exiting the truck. I never did this for a long period of time.. maybe a minute or two. A few weeks ago, I found a slot that was only hot, while the ignition was on. So, now when I would leave fog lights on, after shutting the truck off, the lights would go off because circuit was broken. Or was it? Could the relay still be drawing enough current even though the lights were not on? And could it drain 2 batteries in 13 days? I am positive the fog light switch was on the entire 13 days.

Currently I removed the battery separator and I have connected all the batteries, to the camper, as I was told to after I sent the recalled unit back to the manufacturer. I'm leaving to go hunt tomorrow and really want the Grandby.

Anoher random question...Do you know if you are charging the camper battery when you are connected to shore power? If so, would it be bad to connect to shore power since I am now connected to the truck without the separator?

Thanks you,
Bryan

 

[ntsqd]

My suspicion is two things are causing your trouble. The first is that dissimilar batteries are connected in parallel. When the alt (or solar) is charging this is semi-acceptable, but when the engine is off this isn't good. I would verify that the camper batteries are separated from the truck batteries when the engine isn't running. The weaker battery(ies) will draw power from the stronger battery(ies) causing a self-discharge cycle. Any resistance between the grounding points for each battery set exacerbates the problem.

The second thing is that late model vehicles have memory keep-alive parasitic draws on the battery(ies) 13 days is probably too long for the truck to sit without being run long enough to top off the starting batteries. I make a point of driving our truck at least once a week (usually to work). If that isn't reasonable to do in your situation I would look into either making your solar charge both battery banks, or get a small solar trickle charger for the truck batteries.

There are such things as "Latching Relays", but I have never heard of such an option in the typical Bosch "Sugar Cube" type of relay. So killing power to its control circuit should revert it to its 'normal' state. Verify that the lights come on when you think that they should be on, and are off when you think that they should be off. Most of that relay type has a "Normally Open" and a Normally Closed" contact. If the wire to the lights accidentally got swapped they would be on when they should be off.
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