Sterling B2B and FogstarDrift

[Insider]

Bit perplexed. I've had a Sterling BB1260 for the last couple of years with lead acid and performed perfectly. Bought a new 300Ahr FogstarDrift and reprogrammed the Sterling to the Lithium profile and no charge going in...nada...which I can see with the Victron BMV. Voltages are all fine and no errors showing up on the Sterling - which has a challenging interface. I connected up to shore power and the Fogstar immediately took 20A from the Victron I have in place. I can upload a circiut diagram but everything is wired up the way it was. I have even seperate earths going from Sterling to vehicle battery and from leisure battery to vehicle as recommended by them. Everything appears to be solid and I have fuses on botht eh vehicle battery and the output of the sterling that are both testing for continuity. I have reset the Sterling several times. I feel like I must bemissing something really obvious. My base vehicle is 2016 and is Euro 5 and always used auto detection on the Sterling. It's about 5C temp wise at the moment so that's OK. Help!!

 

[headlight]

Bit perplexed. I've had a Sterling BB1260 for the last couple of years with lead acid and performed perfectly. Bought a new 300Ahr FogstarDrift and reprogrammed the Sterling to the Lithium profile and no charge going in...nada...which I can see with the Victron BMV. Voltages are all fine and no errors showing up on the Sterling - which has a challenging interface. I connected up to shore power and the Fogstar immediately took 20A from the Victron I have in place. I can upload a circiut diagram but everything is wired up the way it was. I have even seperate earths going from Sterling to vehicle battery and from leisure battery to vehicle as recommended by them. Everything appears to be solid and I have fuses on botht eh vehicle battery and the output of the sterling that are both testing for continuity. I have reset the Sterling several times. I feel like I must bemissing something really obvious. My base vehicle is 2016 and is Euro 5 and always used auto detection on the Sterling. It's about 5C temp wise at the moment so that's OK. Help!!

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I've got a Sterling 60 amp B2B that was previously charging 2 x 100AH lead acid batteries.
12 months ago I replaced them with a Fogstar 230AH.
Obviously I had to change the B2B settings to lithium.
It is not easy and although I altered the settings to what I thought were lithium about a dozen times, following the Sterling instructions, each time I was actually putting the B2B into standby not lithium setting.
Don't ask me how I found out but are you sure you are actually selecting lithium and not standby ?
Can you get a picture of the B2B working ie engine running and B2B leds illuminated ?
It is very awkward to set the settings on the B2B and extremely easy to select standby rather than lithium.

 

[Lenny HB]

Had a Funster contact me recently with the same problem in the end we decided the best option was to scrap the Sterling and fit a Victron. I've come across a few of failures of the Sterling units including my own not a product I would recommend.

 

[headlight]

Had a Funster contact me recently with the same problem in the end we decided the best option was to scrap the Sterling and fit a Victron. I've come across a few of failures of the Sterling units including my own not a product I would recommend.

Mines working fine and has been for the 2 years it's been fitted but as I said selecting lithium is extremely awkward, in my opinion anyway.

 

[Insider]

OK - so good news. I went through the set up of the B2B again based on what #headlight said and was convinced everything was as it should be. I got out the multimeter and was measuring 14.4V on the B2B side of the fuse from the output. I put the multimeter on the other side of the fuse and was seeing aroung 13.3V. That's odd I thought as I had measured it for continuity and the B2B would tell me if the output V was low on the Lithium. I tood out the fuse and in my stupidity in installing the fuse I had never used a washer. As you can see below I had broken the fuse when tighening. It was enough for voltage detection but not enough to allow for charging. I replaced it with an 80A fuse and everything worked immediately with 45A going into the Lithium(95% charged). I likely will buy a Victron at some stage as it integrates with the existing kit but at least now I have a working B2B. Thanks to all.

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