Anyone running a Painless Digital Power Manager?

[malonejy]

I'm having issues with my Painless Digital Power Manager for my dual battery setup and I was wondering if anyone else was running one? Basically it's not connecting my aux battery at all. My first one didn't work and I just swapped in a replacement and it's still not working.

If I've got two bad ones, they must be having some quality control issues

I've run the main battery down to 11v (disconnected alt) and it still won't connect the aux battery. Anyone having better luck than me?

 

[DirtDonk]

Be interested to see how this works out malonejy. I'm getting one for myself, but won't be hooking it up for months at least, so won't be any help for you in that regard.

Have you only been dealing with the reseller, or have you contacted Painless directly with your issues?

Maybe a quick PM to eric0o1 would get an answer you could use? Even if he's not the one that designed it, he might know the right person to ask.

At least you might get an answer next week. I hate running afoul of holiday tech issues!

Good luck.

Paul

 

[malonejy]

Paul,

I've spoken with Painless tech support who were helpful and said my test was valid and the item is indeed bad. I had to go through 4wheelparts for the warranty but they were also helpful. I had to pay upfront for the replacement, but I didn't mind that since I wanted new one before taking out the old one.

Now it looks like I'll be out shipping for two of these things back to 4wheel (no big deal in the grand scheme of things) but I'm losing my confidence in this product. It really makes me wonder how many of these things are on peoples trucks and they don't even know it's not working right It does give me a flashing light (normal operation) so if you never put it under stress/load to test it, you would never know it's bad. With two bad right out of the box, I wonder if there is a whole batch that are bad :-X

I'm hoping someone on here has it installed and can do the same test as me and verify theirs works. If nothing else, I'll keep everyone informed as to what happens. I hate having lingering issues, but at least it's running. My extra battery is just dead weight

James

 

[DirtDonk]

Thanks for the detailed info. Sucks that you're having such trouble with what otherwise looks like a decent setup.
I'll be interested to hear what happens next. I don't think we have any of these in stock unfortunately, or I'd pull it out and test it to see if there's more that are having trouble.

Good luck.

Paul

 

[malonejy]

BTT. I'm hoping someone else is running this setup.

 

[eric0o1]

The Digital Power Manager does not just sense voltage to determine when to bring in the auxiliary battery. Simply draining your main battery down to 11 volts and watching the systems indicator light is not a good way to test if the system is working. A better way would be to drain your main battery to around the same 11 volts or so and then, with the alternator connected and everything else in working condition, crank the engine and watch the indicator light while cranking to see if the light goes solid. If it does this means that your starter was enough of a load to make the system combine the batteries. A winch under heavy load with the engine running is an ever better way to test the system.

 

[malonejy]

Thanks Eric. Once I got everything hooked back up and cranked it, the blue light did come on and stay on while it was turning over. I'll give it the winch test this weekend. Thanks again.

 

[eric0o1]

no problem, I was just relaying the information from Jeff, the other product designer here, he's the one that helped bring those to market..