[77newell]

Gordon: you make an excellent point. Hmm. You mentioned earlier that what used to work no longer works so something has changed. Based upon the advice from Newell to run the engine and parallel the batteries, it seems the electrical supply was marginal as built and therefore any small increase in the resistance in the circuit or deterioration of motor efficiency would be enough to require the extra voltage of the running engine alternator with the batteries paralleled. Since I'm a lazy guy I would just run the engine with the batteries paralleled rather than try to figure out what is causing things not to work the way they once did. I hate diagnosing problems like this because little things that make the difference are so hard to find.