Chinook RV

Hi everyone,

I am a newbie 2004 Chinook Concourse owner. I am in the process of starting my modifications. The first is the power system. I have a DC electrician who has helped me on another build and we have been looking at putting 700 watts solar on the roof. The issue is the batteries. Renogy has a great Black Friday sale on at the moment on 400 amp batteries (the REGO). List CAD 4,749.99 per battery reduced to CAD $2,300 so I am hoping to purchase 2 of them before the sale ends. The issue is that each of them weighs 112.44 lbs. The total weight is then close to 226 lbs in the side storage compartment where the batteries currently sit (not a lot of room inside the Chinook to store them; although that would have been my preference). This is a lot of weight and there is no guidance that I could find on the weight capacity for those storage compartments. I also have a welder so am trying to think of how to leverage off the frame to provide support for underneath the box to support the weight of these batteries.


Any thoughts or observations?

A few of us put 3 batteries in that existing box without issue. Not sure how heavy esch of those are.. seems like it's gotta be close.

if you do not need to get to the batteries i would have the welder make a mount or box the attaches to the frame rail behind the transmission

Personally, I would switch to lithium batteries, which give you almost twice the useful energy per AH rating and weigh half as much or less than lead-acid. You can get temperature protected 100+AH lithiums now for under $300. and they have 200/400 AH versions in bigger form factor. You would get almost the same energy for 400AH of lithium vs 800AH of lead-acid in half the space and weight.

Hi Clay, Sorry i should have mentioned that the regos are lithium. Each of them are 400amps and self heat, waterproof and can be operated from your phone. The total amperage that i would be adding is 800 amps. I'm going high so i can be off grid and power the AC (lol i am also looking at a DC air conditioner to reduce draw)

This is a link to renogy's new REGO battery https://ca.renogy.com/rego-12v-400ah-li ... enogy-one/

Bear, I like what you are doing and look forward to hearing how your electrical upgrade works out. I looked at doing same thing but costs were prohibitive, plus I recently got new A/C and didn't want to eat that cost. I elected to replaced two 6volt 220ah batteries weighing 144 lbs total with three lithium 100ah batteries weighing 100lbs.

Not sure how much our trays could hold but I did look at getting braces welded underneath to support two more 6v batteries before going lithium. When I was looking at going full electric as you, I wondered if you could split batteries and put one in rear cargo compartment.