Question about ProMariner ProTech-4 charger

[leecea]

I'm hoping someone else has one of these chargers and can help.

The charger came with my boat and seems to charge the batteries OK. However, I noticed two things:

1. The previous owner had connected two of the three +ve terminals to the house battery bank but left the third terminal with no connection. The manual is very clear that no post should be left unloaded, so this seemed odd.

2. The charger has three status LEDs that indicate whether it is in Fast, Absorb, or Float mode. All three of my LEDs are illuminated all the time. This doesn't correspond to anything in the manual.

I just corrected point 1 by putting a jumper wire from the unloaded terminal to a loaded terminal, as required by the manual. I used about 4" of 10AWG which was thicker than they suggested.

But all three status LEDs are still illuminated!

Can anyone else with this type of charger say how their status LEDs work? Do they work as per the manual or do they all light up?

Thanks.

[Pete7]

Well that's quite an old charger, perhaps two decades. We have the slightly newer version from Sterling Power which I bought 16 years ago.

I would ignore the LEDs and instead check the dip switch settings against the manual and then the battery outputs whilst in absorb and float etc to ensure they match the battery. If so all good to go.

They were expensive new, ours £300 and still works properly, though ours has 7 LEDs and are difficult to see which ones are lit as they illuminate the ones next to them as well. We just use the battery monitor to keep an eye on what is happening.

Pete

[sailorboy1]

If it has been, and still is, working is there a concern?

[leecea]

I guess my concern is that something isn't right with the charger and perhaps it's not following its Fast, Absorb, Float mode schedule as it should do, and maybe shortening the battery life.

I have a Xantrax monitor and the voltage doesn't always align with the charger manual. For example, the Xantrax is showing 14.2v right now and yet the charger manual says it puts out 14.7v in absorption mode and 13.5 in float.

Perhaps 14.2v is fine and I am misunderstanding things (we do have a DC-DC charger that diverts some charge from the house bank to the starter battery during charging so maybe that also changes things).

We've had the boat for 3 years and this was on the bottom of my to-do list since, as you say, it does do the job. Perhaps I am overthinking it now.

[leecea]

Interestingly I got a response back from the vendor saying…

Unfortunately, when all 3 leds illuminate at the same time, that is typically an indication that the unit has failed.

I’ll see if I can get more details about what they mean.

[leecea]

For anyone who might find this thread later:

- With the new jumper in place my battery monitor showed 14.2v from 10am yesterday all the way through until this morning. Given that I've been plugged in at the dock for days, that didn't make sense to me, so I removed the jumper.

- With the jumper removed, it's holding the batteries at 13.5v, so I guess that's float mode.

I'm looking into replacing the charger.