Leisure battery kit

[marko66]

sparticus, mine is a willington kit on a v6 and thats all you need brilliant bit of kit half hour to fit and runs all my leds,blinds,radio,tap no problems !

[Sparticus]

vanvliet I've Pm'd you, the other one has gone.

[vanvliet]

No idea, but I am sure that Willington could advise

[vanvliet]

Willinton now sold to Sparticus - probably the last brand new one available.I checked with Martin and he tells me that it fits all automatic petrol or diesel Bongos up to year 2000. I had not looked at the harness for a while but on checking before sending it off it is obvious that Martin put together a great heavy duty bit of kit using the best of components.

[winchman]

I wonder why willington stopped making them?
I wonder if he would make the plans freely available so we could make our own?

[mikeonb4c]

I wonder why willington stopped making them?
I wonder if he would make the plans freely available so we could make our own?

Now that's an idea. I still have the correspondence I had with him years back where I suggested he consider making a LB kit that was simple enough for idiots like me to make. He did such a good job of those kits it's a great shame he's stopped.

[vanvliet]

Or, you could plead with him to make up one last run of, say, ten kits - - - - - BTW his name is not Willinton, that is the name of his business.

Martin Bird
12 Willinton Road, Knowle,
Bristol, Avon BS41HY.
[email protected]


Good luck!

[Dodgey]

The plans are not difficult (it's me who sold the one linked here earlier - the "dear one" )

It's just a voltage sensing relay that has the LB live fed into a fuse block with the resulting wires going to the Bongo fuse panel. The relay, fuse block and connectors will cost you around £30. Then you have the cables, and the connector pins, and the fuses, and the plastic tubing, and the heat shrink (and solder etc). You could do it for around £45ish if you shop around.

I make them when customers ask for a split charging relay system when I do solar installations (I am "solar camper solutions"). I don't generally make them to sell alone, there isn't really enough margin in it for the time it takes to make them (every connection is soldered and insulated to a high safe standard - takes a while). I sell them for between £70 and £80 depending on whether it's for a solar customer, an ebay purchase, or a direct purchase from my website. The one on ebay was a spare I had which needed selling.

The live cable linking the two batteries is rated at 30Amps, and the cables feeding the fuse box are thin walled 17amp cables. The fuses linking the 2 batteries are 20Amps. An awful lot of people seem happy with a 20amp fused link (I could use 30 amp fuses but I like to leave a safety margin on the cable) . I know a fully flat battery can draw over 20 amps and blow the fuses, but I pretty much exclusively sell these to people with solar, so their LB is never flat! , and most people, even without solar, don't generally tend to totally flatten their battery. Even "mostly" flat won't draw a massive current. Totally flat will!

I could make a kit with a 100Amp relay and correspondingly bigger cables and fuses, but I'd have to charge over £100 to make it worth it. I'm a cottage industry so I have to make everything in small batches.

[vanvliet]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzJx6dk7rg0

[Gasy]

Has any body tried these split charge thingys

eBay item number 360679839183

Looks a good bit of kit

[g8dhe]

If you go for the above please remember to add fuses close to each battery, fuse size to suit the wiring fitted to the batteries.

[Gasy]

^^^
Thank you
As always good advise on here

[mikexgough]

There is a full kit here which includes a battery monitor...an led one but it's all there for £85... bit of assembly for a competent DIY'er with (like me) average sparky knowledge....

[lancyman]

Someone on Facebook suggested this
http://bit.ly/1ikO1ED does it look ok?

[mikexgough]

I'd go for a beefier one than than personally.... 30 amps is a little underpowered IMHO.... remember the Willinton is 100 amps..
The kit I previously pointed out was from an off roading supplier so should be up to the job. I guess the key for most folks is the initial costs of the kits, add on a tray, Leisure Battery and you can spend plenty .... £200 ish... and that should sort it for all of the kit for the job...