sorry it took me so long to snap a pic.

took one this morning as I was getting the camper ready for Sturgis trip

As you can see the positive terminals are connected together as are the negative terminals

Then connected to the camper

this gives you 12 volts to the camper for an extended period of time (twice as long as one battery)

If you hook the neg to the positive from one battery to the other you would be getting 24 volts which you don't want to do because you would burn out your lights and other 12v accessories

one is called in series the other parallel

don't ask me which is which thats where I get confused

This is a parallel hook up.

( i think ?)

your right

(I think?)

kind of unusual for the oink of the day..

I didn't say they were a nice pair LOL

well, now that you mention it, they are......actually.

Thanks, EI.

Thats what I was going to do before we go to the "wilderness" again - that is, a campground without electricty or water.

I call it BOONDOCKING

and it come in handy at the Nascar Races

and overnighting on the Wal-mart parking lots

BTW.... I had to move over the original battery box which was centered on the tongue in order to put the second battery box along side.

I also had to do come cutting on the ends of the boxlids so that they would sit flush on the boxes

My mistake I should have placed them a little further apart to allow clearance for the lids

I used to hook up the batteries on my boat like that when I would fish electric only lakes. One thing that I always wanted to try but never did was a "solar recharger". Has anyone ever tried these. Sounds like a good idea. I'm sure they don't charge a lot very fast but may be just enough to get by.

Doesn't look like you had any more room to slide them apart. They just fit in there perfectly.

Funny you should mention solar chargers

Just got this in e mail today and thinking of getting one for when the camper sits in the yard. The batteries drain because there is a propane leak detector that is on constantly that draw current

I don't know about charging while your using the batteries for fishing motors because thats a lot of draw. but for camping it would be ideal

http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=6970&productId=200315904&R=200315904&cm_ven=Housefile&cm_cat=IR&cm_pla=072105consumer&cm_ite=P3 

This item

http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=6970&productId=200306865&R=200306865 

also looks like a good idea. The catalog says you can connect multiple units to generate more amperage.

Since you use electricity more at night than you do during the day, I would think that the solar chargers would work enough to keep people like us camping for an extra day or maybe two without plugging in.

I wish I had an easy way to translate how much current the camper uses into what the battery says - how many crank amps equal how many hours of use on average.

EI,

My camper came with a blade switch to disconnect the battery while the camper is idle so the LP detector and fridge light (I leave the fridge open when we're not using the camper) wouldn't come on and run the battery down. It meant that I couldn't use the battery cover, but I really didn't care about that.

you just gave me a great idea

I may put an inline switch on the cable just outside of the battery box so I can disconnect the batteries when it is in storage.

or maybe even just a pull apart connector

EI,

The switch or connector needs to be heavy enough to handle the amperage from your truck alternator or the camper power inverter while recharging the battery. I don't know about your system, but mine gete pretty warm when recharging a low battery.

Well I can always do what I do know and just run an extention cord out to the camper and plug it in

I was working and sweating in the camper all day. cleaning and rearranging supplys

The wife came home from work and said "why didn't you just turn on the AC in the camper you already have it plugged into the house"

DOHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!