Bongo Fury

Within an hour and a half of picking up my new Bongo on Friday I managed to flatten the battery. Fortunately I was still only about a mile or so away from the dealer who was most gracious and helpful

I really don't want to do that aagin in a hurry so can someone tell me how long I can leave the CD player on after I stop before the battery goes down?

Is there anythng clever that I can do to the hi-fi to avoid this happening?

If you had the stereo on you probably had the ignition on too and this would cause a big draw on the battery. You could re wire the stereo to a permanent feed but would then need to remember to switch it off whenever you are not using it. You could fit a seperate switch via a relay so you can switch the radio on without the ignition being on but with the seperate switch in the off position the radio will switch on and off with ignition.

Better still fit a leisure battery and split charging system (loads of posts on here about this). Then using a couple of 5 pin relays and a switch you can have the radio working as normal when driving then switch to using the leisure battery when not

I suspect your battery was low cos' I've had a CD player going for about 6 hours with no problems - not with the ignition on though.
You could carry out Pippin's mod as follows:-

Look at the fuse board by the drivers right knee.
Remove the fixing screws and wiggle it forwards so that the rear is visible.

Counting from top left to right the numbering goes 1 to 8.

Fuses 1 to 5 are fed by a thick white/red from fuse BTN under the bonnet, which is always live.
(the fuse, silly, not the bonnet!)

Fuses 6,7,8 are fed only when the ignition is on via the thick red/black wire.
6&7 are curtains L&R, 8 is cigarlighter & mirrors.

1] If you do not have a secondary battery:

You can either select just the cigarlighter/mirrors or probably easier and handier select those and the curtains so that you can operate them without the ignition on.

Cut the thick red/black wire going in a couple of inches from the rear of the fuseholder for 6,7,8. Insulate the end that comes out of the loom.
Use a short length of similarly sized wire to extend the end going into 6,7,8 and tap it into the thick white/red that feeds fuses 1-5.

If you want to select just fuse 8 for the cigarlighter/mirrors then you would have to identify the blue wire coming out of fuse 8, cut that and insulate the end coming out of the fuse 8. The blue wire going into the loom would then need an in-line 15A fuse fitting and then tapping onto the aforementioned thick white/red that feeds fuses 1-5.

2] If you have a secondary battery you may wish to feed things from that rather than from the engine battery.

The instructions above are modified only by disregarding tapping anything into the aforementioned thick white/red that feeds fuses 1-5.
Instead you would need to connect it/them into an appropriately fused wire connected to the secondary battery.

While you are at it you could also feed all the internal vehicle lighting from that source as well.
To do so, cut the blue/red wire coming out of fuse 1 and insulate the end coming out of the fuse. Fit an appropriate 10A inline fuseholder to the end disappearing into the loom and connect it to the secondary battery.

So, there you have it! If in doubt - ASK!

We picked up the van this afternoon and stopped at the local Little Chef to meet the folk who were coming to pick up the Renault. While we were waiting we played with all the electric uppie-doonie gizmos so it had a flat battery and I had to call the dealer out to get us started.

If the ''electric uppie-doonie gizmos'' included the AFT then it is important to have the engine running as use of the roof opening motor will take a lot out of the battery.

Thanks, team

Brian is indeed correct - it was the AFT that caused my demise and by the time I read the manual it was already too late then I read the warnings about the stereo draining the battery so I thought I should check this out here

I reckon if John can play his for about 6 hours I might not have too much problem but I will pass the helpful description of how to wire into the leisure battery on to my favourite mechanic before it all goes to pot again

thanks again and a happy new year to all

Hello Mr hairy, i managed to eek from sunday evening, to wednesday afternoon once when i'd accidentally left the stereo on...

Mine is wired to a rather large leisure battery,and the stereo is driving a 300 watt amp,and a 12"sub!

I can still only manage about 16-18 hours before the l/b dies with just my coolbox switched on....

A great new year to you too...