Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

My vagabond ll is having trouble lately.
There is always a red light on it, when it is on charge it make a loud motor sound and a (pssss kind of sound) and finally, there a very weird smell around the battery on charge.
When I use it there a beep sound too.
I am out of warrenty.

Which piece do you think is the problem, the battery or the inverter ?
Thank you !

First, discontinue use of the VII. There is a problem with at least the battery.

It could be either, but it could very well be both. If an inverter is faulty, it may not charge a battery. If the battery is not charged, then it can become faulty. It sounds like the battery is definitely faulty. The reasons the battery is bad include a bad charging system in the inverter, the battery has reached the end of its serviceable life, or a charge has not been kept in the battery causing it to sulfate.

If you disconnect the battery, and plug the inverter in as though it is charging, you can meter the battery connections to see how much voltage is coming from the inverter's charging circuit. You should get 13.85VDC. If it is much less than that (13.75) then the charging system is bad, and is likely what caused the battery to go bad.

And also, there's always a red flashing light, about each 4 seconds, even when it's not charging.
Does is makes a difference about the diagnostic ?

If the red LED blinks when the charger is plugged in, then that tells me the charger output is low.

In any case, the battery will almost certainly need replacing, but the best thing to do is to have the inverter tested for output voltage from the charger, as described in an earlier post in this thread. If you are not comfortable doing this, we can take a look at it for you.

I've tested the inverter and and voltage seems fine.
The thing is, the fan is still very very noisy once plugged, for about 5 seconds, and then it seems to stop completly.
The battery was swolen, inflated too...

Is it noisy, or just audible? The fan, depending on the version of VII, can ramp up for a few seconds before settling, and not a problem. If it is noisy (i.e. grinding, etc), then there is an internal problem separate of the bad battery.