The dual alt, three battery setup just saved me from calling for help. Today's mission was to go to the local mega church and transport tables and chairs to the fire station for our Troop's big Breakfast With Santa fundraiser going on this Saturday. Two years ago we moved everything easily with the deuce, last year I was down with a bad back and it took three pickups.
We got the load hauled and unloaded just fine. I moved the deuce into a dirt parking area near the fire station after the offload so I wasn't blocking the third fire truck since this was an active station today (they rotate them here or something). It wasn't a huge concern since the third truck is the oldest and hasn't been on a run in awhile they say, but just on the safe side I parked out of the way while we stored the tables and chairs neatly.
The scouts took off and soldier B and I stayed and chatted with the guys at the station for a couple minutes until they got called out to support an ambulance or something.
When we went to fire up the deuce all I got was clicking. The front tire was in a small rut, the two of us weren't push starting this thing ourselves.
A voltage check showed one battery at 9.8 volts. The other was 12.6. There was some corrosion on the weaker battery (both actually but more on the weaker one). We cleaned everything up and tried to start it, but no luck.
Finally I just swapped the nearly new battery from the 12 volt system with the dead battery on the 24 volt side. I didn't check for voltage on the third battery since the volt meter was already put up and it was either gonna work or it wasn't.
Once the swap was made she fired up and got us going no problem. I'll have soldier B check the weak battery to see if the ride in the 12 volt side and cleaning the connections helped. If not I'll throw it on my smart charger to see if I have a dead cell. Water levels in both 24 volt side batteries were good.
Dual alts vs convertors have been discussed to death and both have good points. I was happy with Tm America's set up when I got it and I'm even more happy today.