Possibly fried leisure battery, reveresed polarity?

[draper3000]

Good evening.

Only had our Bongo 1 week and 2 days now, all going brilliantly...just did big 4.5 hr drive down from Manchester, absolutely flawless... . . but did'nt add any charge to the leisure battery.

...the other day I was sorting out electrics, (Zig unit fuses, tap pump keeps blowing a fuse etc), leisure battery was low, so was charging it with a charger, just plugged it onto the points in the engine bay. (Should of unplugged the normal leads but stupidly did'nt) was charging it fine, then I found our electric hookup lead, plugged it in the side of the van and this would obivously of started charging the lesiure battery too...Doh!, its done something to it....the leisure battery is still running some lights and stuff but does'nt charge any more....

Main battery is fine, alternator fine.

Is there a way to reverse the polarity back if that is what has happened. Some website says to drain battery completely and charge from scratch, should I just buy a new leisure battery, looks like its been around a while any way.

Cheers for any advice Jon

Oh...also a quick one, how does everyone cope with sleeping in the roof, when the other half needs to get up in the middle of the night..does it get really annoying having to roll back out the way to lift the hatch.. Have'nt got one of the bongo mattresses yet...downstairs layout does'nt leave much room for 2 people to sleep. Hmm?

[francophile1947]

Can't see why charging your LB from 2 sources at the same time should cause any problem - probably just a duff battery. However, I'm no electrician and stand to be corrected.

[Rhod]

Can't help with the battery I'm afraid.
As to sleeping in the roof, a pee bottle works for us - the other half uses a "Shewee" to good effect!

[Simon Jones]

Charging the battery from two sources shouldn't do it any harm, as long as the polarity is + to + & - to -. The problem seems to be that the LB is not charged while you're driving. Not sure which Zig unit you have, but the CF8 I have seems to have only a very crude form of split charge. When set to the Touring position, it appears to just connect both batteries in parallel, so if you leave it like that when the engine is not running, you end up with two flat batteries. I would recommend fitting a proper split charge system & leave the Zig on the On Site setting all the time to keep the batteries seperated.

There are several options on split chargers. The cheap ones often found at caravan suppliers seem to be incapable of withstanding much load & tend to burn out. At the other end of the scale, I have a unit from Willinton (try a search) which is rated at something like 90A which is much higher than you realistically require.

I would suggest that you disconnect the positive lead & the charge the battery using a conventional charger. Once complete measure the voltage across the terminals - it should be close to 12V. While the positive lead is disconnected, measure the voltage across it while the engine is running. You should expect somewhere between 13V & 14V if you're getting a feed from the alternator. Assuming thats ok, stop engine & re-connect lead. If the battery voltage drops below 12V after a few minutes & continues to drop, you either have something drawing current or a suspect battery.

Good luck.