[KRoseVideo]

I have a 2005 GulfStream BT Cruiser BT 5211 and had similar problems with the DC, although I have not started the generator when I was plugged in to a land line.

There were a number of problems that I encountered and eventually overcame. I will try to outline them here and, if there is interest, I could make a video.

1) First thing I needed to do was go to Home Depot and buy a decent Ammeter (Ampere Meter) and a decent Volt Meter. One meter can do both jobs, but I bought separate units.
Use the Volt meter to check the battery to see if they are charged. 12+ Volt on your Volt meter. Check at the Positive side where the cable attaches from the vehicle and the Negative side where the Negative Lead attaches from the vehicle. This assumes you have two 12 volt batteries hooked up in parallel. (See YouTube Videos for how to hook up if necessary.) I used the Ammeter to know what, if any, Current was flowing through the cables to the batteries. The Ammeter helped a lot with diagnosing the problems and with knowing when I had succeeded.

2) The second thing is to know the priority for charging the batteries. FIRST is a Land Line whether 30 amp or the cheater plug 15 amp connection. Either of these will provide power to the converter to charge up your 12 volt batteries. SECOND power Source is from the Vehicle running in which case the excess power after charging up your vehicle battery is diverted to the Coach Batteries. (See 3 below.) THIRD Priority for charging your batteries is the Generator whose main function is to provide AC Current.

3) In my BT Cruiser, There is a 5 amp fuse that is "in-line" approximately 1 foot from the Vehicle battery, in the wire that heads over to the junction on the driver's side of the engine compartment. In my case, we found that the 5 amp fuse was blown. Replacing this helped but not totally. We used the Volt Meter to confirm that we were getting 13+ Volt to the opposite side of this junction, thereby giving higher voltage to charge the 12 Volt battery. I checked at the battery end of the + cable and saw that it was 13 + volt so this was good. Initially, prior to replacing the 5 amp fuse, our DC Volt Meter just showed the Voltage of the house battery which at the time was 12 volt since I had, by this time, bought a battery charger and charged my batteries outside of the camper to be sure that I knew the batteries were both good. (They were 8 months old at the time.) The 12 volt reading was just the voltage of the battery. It still seemed that my batteries were not really getting fully charged. So I moved to step 4 below.

4) Finally solved my problem when I figured out what those three BUSS BREAKERS down in the battery compartment did and how they possibly got dis-connected by the cables or other wires bumping against them. It seems that there are little red buttons sticking out of the front face of each of these breakers. These stick out at a height near the top of the batteries which made me conclude that a cable must have hit one of the three when I installed the two batteries in Parallel as described earlier. I eventually pressed the red buttons on all three of these breakers and then NOTHING WORKED. I knew I was making progress. Using my flash light, I played with the breakers and found a little black flapper sticking out the bottom of each of the Buss Breakers. I pushed these flappers up and they stayed in position. then, Vola, I had full DC Power and could operate all of my DC Appliances.

Note: My DC system provides control power for the Dometic refrigerator to ignite and operate with Propane. Or, the refrigerator can operate with AC Current from a Land Line or Generator. My Frige does not operate with just the DC power.

Hope this helps somebody. Roy // KRoseVideo