Hi Paul

Good question. We have a 2013 Jayco Starcraft, the unit for the breakaway is at the front end (ie the forward end) under the bed, it has a test button which will give the charge state. I am pretty sure its kept charged by the normal caravan charging system on 240V or solar if you have solar. I reached this conclusion by testing before every trip and its fully charged, even after 3 months of sitting still, its charged.

I have been through the books we received with the van and no mention of how this is kept charged. I guess common sense dictates that it needs to be kept in a charged condition and should be part of the normal caravan circuits, rather than stand alone.

I will do some more research and post the outcome if its different than above.

Safe travels

Olley46 wrote:

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I have a 2000 model Jayco Westport the break away battery in mine is charged when the 4WD is hooked up and towing, I don't think it is charged through the van 12volt system when hooked up to 240volt, I may be wrong.

Lance C

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 Ours is the same. We found when parked for a long time, the battery went flat. A better system would be to have it charging as part of the house battery.

Larry 

Hi Larry

            On the break away system that  I have the square box that the battery is in has two screw on terminals on the front of the box I am not shore if you can run a positive and a negative lead from the breakaway battery to the house battery so you charge the breakaway battery while the house battery is being charged on 240 volt, both these batteries are being charged while driving.

Lance C

hi paul our is the same as your photo , we have ours wired directly to the main fuse board off our house batteries , so when parked it will draw a small current of the house batt and when travelling gets topped up by andrson plug feeding charge into house batts, good question , re where it is , i havent chk ours yet but am told its behind a cover on the main unit , not a really big battery , we were told to replace it periodicaly every 2 yrs , not sure if this is correct , we re wired our van s main pwr area and made sure it ran thru a dedicated fused line to the main pwr feed , hope this helps 

cheers grae and deb 

It can come down to how your car/ van electrical connector is wired or how you use it in the van.  I have seen pin 2 used for 12v power which can be wired thru to the 12v fridge and/or breakaway box to charge the battery.  It does depend on the make of the breakaway unit - does it have the wiring for charging?  If not then you have to open the box and directly connect a battery charger to the battery.