Upgrading/Replacing The RV Converter Charger – Affordable LiFePO4 Unowix Batteries – Install

hey how is everybody lou from rv habit uh on my next step for upgrading to affordable lithium batteries with the uniwix now uh the first thing you gotta remember is i said you needed a battery monitor the four light system that's on your rv that works off volts and lithium batteries maintain a constant voltage so that will not work for lithium batteries you really should add a a new battery monitor and again i put that video out it's installing an ala video battery monitor i'll leave a link to it up above uh but that should be one of your first steps the next step of course is installing a lithium compatible uh charger converter now most of them are the newer ones are going to be able to be adaptable they either do it automatically or there's a jumper or switch you can use i had to get a new one i got a new one from bestconverter.com uh great price and we're going to install this today and the first thing you need to do is disconnect your power so i'll disconnect the power and then the second thing i'm going to do is totally disconnect the batteries so there's no chance of any arcing or problems in here again if you're not comfortable with this work hire a technician to do it okay but next after the coach is disconnected from the power i'm going to disconnect the batteries so this is my battery bank underneath my steps now before you do anything and everybody's wiring is going to be a little bit different i mean yeah positive to positive and negative to negative but the wires you have coming from your rv may be a little bit different uh than what you see here but the first thing i'm going to do is disconnect this and this is that shunt i put in from the li meter but first thing we'll do is take off the negative terminal so and i can go back and i can get my positive wires off [Music] so gonna find your power control center usually they're by the door and some travel trailers they're in the bedroom even in the kitchen wherever they want to fit them they fit them they're usually held on with a couple screws we'll take them out and there's usually one in the center it's a tiny one and this comes right off now if you look at this this will tell you complete wiring diagram on the inside of the panel if you need it but let's put that to the side for a minute so now what we're looking at is your ac side and your dc side so ac runs all the what would typically be like your house current like your microwave your outlets dc pretty much runs all the lights computer boards the boards that operate the air condition the refrigerator anything dc on this side and this is where your charger connects right your converter charger connects right here some boards it's up top and the wires go up and around these boards just clip right out and then you can run the wire back around mine's real easy it's right in the front now just i know i unplugged it i know i disconnected the batteries but it does not hurt [Music] to double check everything you do nothing oh that's millivolts by the way what you're seeing there and i'll just check the ac side nothing nothing nothing okay so i know i'm good now i can safely work on this panel so a lot of times you'll have two different type of charger converters one that's part of your power control center it slips in the bottom it's flying here uh and the other type is you'll find it to the side or behind the the power control center it's a box with a plug and it just plugs in and then these two wires would connect to that box okay mine is built in so the first thing we're going to do is we are going to disconnect these two wires here that go to the control board okay and that's what feeds from the charger converter to your dc side okay and i'll just pull out just like that okay the next thing on my board i have a smart wizard is progressive dynamics there's a little clip here that connects to the board i'm going to take that out and that's that'll plug into the new board and the last three wires go to your ac side that's what takes the ac turns it into dc here and pushes it to the dc panel and it also charges your battery so there's three wires you have a black which is hot a white which is neutral and a green which is ground so very easily we're going to take the ground off long screw down here bottom screw take the ground off then we're going to trace up we're going to take the neutral off and this should go to the very top one most of the time the top breaker in the rv is for the converter but we'll check and it is the top is for the the uh converter and we'll just loosen this up can't get in there with that driver let's see if i can get in there with this nope i'm gonna have to get a different driver okay i'm back with a longer tip so i can get into that loosen that nut up and that'll come right out and then just wheel that down so now we have all our wires disconnected we have our our pin wire disconnected now we could slide the converter out and that's just held in by two screws right in front and it'll slide right out and that's what she looks like now the more current boards i'll show you on the new one they have jumpers here that you can make it either lead acid batteries gel batteries agm batteries or lithium batteries this is an older model it doesn't do that so let's put this to the side and we'll get the new one so this is the new lithium capable charger converter and you could see down here i don't know if you can but there's a little jumper there and it's for lithium this is where our pin is going to go these two wires are going to go back here and here's our three wires that come from the ac and what i'll do is i'll just slide this in here first put these wires through the hole there and yep the black is going to reach fine ground and in neutral everything will reach fine i'm going to take this plug first that's the first thing i'm going to do so i don't forget it and i'm going to plug that back on the board the next thing i'm going to do is to my charger wires for the dc side and they got to be pretty snug you don't want them to vibrate loose and we'll get the black in there here we go [Music] and again they're allen wrenches because they really do want that to be snug [Music] okay so the next thing i'll do is i'll take my hot wire here i'm going to run that back behind the other wires keep it nice and clean and we'll get that in the breaker you know what i'm gonna take this breaker out so i can make sure i'm getting that wire in there see it's a double breaker yep okay i want to make sure i have good contact and then we'll hook that back in the next thing i'll do is run my neutral up to the neutral bus bar get that in there it's a good time to check your screws also to make sure everything's nice and tight since everything's off and the last wire is the ground wire and we'll get that in the ground bus bar right there like that and i'm just going to check some of these wires make sure they're tight good and install the two front screws again and that lithium charger is installed it is that basic again if you're not comfortable with this hire someone to do it but it is really that easy just a couple wires now there is one thing i want to do let me see if i got it here so i made a little label and it's very pretty important because you don't know what's going to happen to your rv down the road you're going to sell it somebody's working on it i made a little label that says lithium battery converter charger so i'm going to stick that right here on the side right here on the side so anybody who comes in here does some work on it or if i sell it they know that this is set up for lithium you cannot put lead acid batteries without uh [Music] switching the jumpers on this first that's it she's all done now what i'm going to do is i'm going to plug in the power and i'm going to make sure everything works and that i'm getting power through the board to my dc circuits okay my power is plugged back in my surge guard just uh reset so i know i have power to the rv when it powered up i saw this fan give a little jiggle but we are going to now test to make sure that converter is putting out power and it is it's putting out 14.57 and that's the difference between lithium typically this would be like 13 2 to 13 6 for a regular charger lithium needs to be charged at a higher rate and it'll take a charge much faster but that's working fantastic and if i check here i have it i have the batteries disconnect off so i know i'm not getting any problem there but it's feeding at two lines it's feeding my dc panel so perfect everything's working great i can put this panel back on and the step for putting the lithium charger in is done and that is actually probably the easiest step i didn't even i didn't even get cut so uh we're just about done so that was it for installing the lithium converter charger and and it's the same as if you just had to replace any charger in case it broke or something like that but very very simple if you're comfortable with wiring if you're not comfortable with wiring please hire a technician to do it uh i don't need to tell you what electricity can do to you and the dc side most people say it's not a problem it can hurt you it you know it packs a lot of amps so please if you're not comfortable get somebody to help you or hire a technician but i hope you join me for the last and final video in this series and that's going to be installing these uniwix uh lithium batteries i can't wait to get them in hopefully i'll get to that tomorrow i will be doing a complete blog article on my website rvhabit.com to outline everything it'll have all four videos on it it'll have all the specifications for this battery and pdf form if you want to uh do some more research on it and uh i hope you join me but as always thanks for watching i'll see you soon

Channel: RV Habit

Views: 40,008

Keywords: RV, motorhome, Class C, trailer, camper, mods, upgrades, rvhabit, rving, reviews, tips, rv habit, diy, how to, rv converter, rv convertr install, progressive dynamics, wfco, converter charger, how to install an rv converter, how to install a power converter in an rv, unowix batteries, lifepo4, lithium converter for rv, lithium converter charger, rv lithium converter charger, rv lithium battery upgrade, budget lithium battery, rv smart converter, rv battery, how to rv, rv converter install

Id: FPjKQ_9ZLWo

Length: 16min 16sec (976 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 12 2022