True charge 20

[fkittson]

If you read any of the manuals for automatic chargers they are not to be left unattended/un-monitored for extended times. It's not safe. That why most people have solar.

[Tortuga's Lie]

I have an older True Charge 20 with the temp sensor and I have not yet had an issues to complain about except tht it takes awhile to fully charge. I am curious though if the problems are with the newer design, older or universal? I know that the new design looks totally different than the old one. Mines about 10 years old with a 360 amp-hr battery bank.

old design

new design

[Sailor Doug]

If it is made buy Xantex don't buy install it. I had a 12 year old one on a former boat. I replaced one on my current boat (true charge 40). It failed the placement third one is still working. Dealer was no help, I paid return freight, killed my stating battery and my house batteries seemed to have lost capacity.
Charger would start a charge mode then processor would drop voltage to 11.2v. Xantex said they new they had a problem that was either a voltage sensor or software. I went without a battery charger for three months last year and buying new house bank this year. 4xt105 2 years old.

[neptunesjester]

My buddy had the xantrex charger/inverter and it damn near set his boat on fire. Juiced his 8d battery bank to death in short order. The batteries were sizzling and we had to pull the fuses to the charger to stop it.

I had a Charles 30 amp. It was undersized for the job and burned out in 3 yrs. I replaced it with a larger Iotas (gave each bank a dedicated charger) and have been very happy with them. 10+ yrs of trouble free service.

So
-1 for xantrex
+1 for Iota

Later,
NJ

[transmitterdan]

Originally Posted by fkittson

So if everyone on here has nothing but trouble with the TC20 then how is it that everyone that I talk to say that they are great and have had no problems at all

Xantrex has changed hands as you mentioned. My unscientific statistics suggests a time correlation between reports of good quality and service turning into poor quality and service. It could be that the change of hands wasn't a good thing.

It should also be remembered too that there are different vintages of the tru-charge lineup. The early models were well liked. The later ones not so much. I have an early model tru-charge 40 from the "old" Xantrex that has worked perfectly for 9 years. I also have a 50A Xantrex later model charger that burned up $1,200 worth of batteries and it could have been much worse.

Mastervolt makes good chargers.

[Jim Cate]

for the OP: reading all these reports I don't see how you could consider installing your Xantrex charger. The odd are not all that good!

I'll add one more bit of anecdotal data: had a Tru-charge 10 that carked it when about two months out of warranty. I knew that I was stuffed, but called the Xantrex folks to find where the nearest authorized repairer was. Their response was that they considered those units to be unrepairable, and that I should buy a new one.

I did so... but not from them!

Cheers,

Jim

[fkittson]

Three weeks ago I installed the true charge 20 on my power boat and not even a glitch. I have done a equalize on 7 yr old batteries turned off the unit for 24 HRS and only a drop of .3v over 6 Batteries. Works great.

[Boatguy30]

I just installed a 40 amp/ 2000 watt inverter charger for a customer. I like the inverter charger feature and also the ability to detune the charger output to match the size of a small generator.

Unit does not give the impression of being well made, but it also by far the cheapest of the inverter chargers. will see how it does, may use the the smaller one on my boat. Ideally want to be able to run a small AC unit via the inverter with a small gas generator running to keep the batteries partially recharging till the sun come back up.