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Leisure battery flat

Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 8:56 am
by liamm
Looking for a few hints .....

originally i thought it was the the tap that was broken, but power is,nt getting to the kitchen. So i checked the leisure battery and its showing 4mV.

I presumed that it was good as i thought the radio / auto top and interior light ran off the leisure but they must be run from the main battery.

Before i got the van the previous owner had removed the fridge and i'm looking to replace with either another fridge of an electric cool box, so i need the battery up and running.

The van is a montegue conversion by 123 away and looks like it has a split charging setup - i'm no auto spark though, the battery could be 7 yrs old and may have been flat for 4yrs.....


Plan of action will be to try to charge the battery, but part of me wonders whether thats jhust a waste of time and i should probably just go for a new battery and see how it holds the charge.

any ideas?

cheers
Liam

Re: Leisure battery flat

Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 9:03 am
by mikeonb4c
liamm wrote:Looking for a few hints .....

originally i thought it was the the tap that was broken, but power is,nt getting to the kitchen. So i checked the leisure battery and its showing 4mV.

I presumed that it was good as i thought the radio / auto top and interior light ran off the leisure but they must be run from the main battery.

Before i got the van the previous owner had removed the fridge and i'm looking to replace with either another fridge of an electric cool box, so i need the battery up and running.

The van is a montegue conversion by 123 away and looks like it has a split charging setup - i'm no auto spark though, the battery could be 7 yrs old and may have been flat for 4yrs.....


Plan of action will be to try to charge the battery, but part of me wonders whether thats jhust a waste of time and i should probably just go for a new battery and see how it holds the charge.

any ideas?

cheers
Liam
On the other hand you don't want to wreck the new battery if the problem is actually an unwanted current drain going on. As well as getting a new battery, might it be worth buying one of those isolator terminals so you can isolate it when not in use and provided you are not needing to charge it while driving etc.?

Note to self - must investigate mine as I suspect its knacked :lol:

Re: Leisure battery flat

Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 11:05 am
by Rhod
I would try charging the battery first & monitoring it to see how long it holds it's charge. If it's good then it should be showing 14V or so. If it drops below 12V within a day or so sitting idle & disconnected then it's goosed. An intelligent charger like a CTEK should identify if the battery is past its sell by date, but can also re-juvenate a battery - to an extent.

Also worth checking for voltage across the battery with the engine running - i.e is the charging system working.

Re: Leisure battery flat

Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 9:00 am
by liamm
replaced the relay and everythings spot on, cheers for the advice.