Bongo Fury

Hi all,

looking for a bit of advice on how to install a battery charger.

have just installed a Willinton setup and i am wondering how many of you have installed your chargers?

i wondered whether to fit the charger under the bonnet or engine bay and run 240v cable from the back to the front or fit it in the rear cupboard (have a full side cupboard) and run 12v cable from back to the battery?

any other solutions gratfully accepted

cheers
Ron

Darkstar wrote:Hi all,

looking for a bit of advice on how to install a battery charger.

have just installed a Willinton setup and i am wondering how many of you have installed your chargers?

i wondered whether to fit the charger under the bonnet or engine bay and run 240v cable from the back to the front or fit it in the rear cupboard (have a full side cupboard) and run 12v cable from back to the battery?

any other solutions gratfully accepted

cheers
Ron

Personally I would prefer to have the charger in the cabin as the other two locations are more at risk from the elements, fluid leaks etc. If you go 12V just make sure that the length and diameter of the cable is sufficient to carry the maximum charging current and I would fuse protect it too.

Also bear in mind that most mains cable is NOT designed to resist abrasion from vibration, so if you do have any runs of mains cable make sure it runs within a protective covering. Also bear in mind that a lot of the 12 volt load on a L/B will be back in the Cab itself, not under the bonnet! So by having the power source in the Cab makes more sense from the point of view of driving the loads, and running a pair of decent sized cables to the L/B only has to be done the once, rather than twice with a mains cable in suitable covering to the front as well!

Hi
I've just fitted a C-tek socket in the dash, so that I can plug the charger direct to it, and put the charger on the floor on the driver's side, and top up during the winter. My power source for the charger is in the rear. Many folk run a cable through the bottom rear hatch and say it doesn't get damaged, or damage the door rubber. They use a camping power source with integral trip.
Cheers
Helen

If you have a full side cupboard I'm guessing you have a 12v source there - like an extra cigar socket? - if that, as it should do, goes to the leisure battery then you can connect your charger wires to the back of that. Your Ctek is only going to charge up to around 4 amps at best so the existing cables will be fine. No need to run separate cables all the way to the front.

Hi Dodgey,

i have the 12v socket you mention, but i haven't used that fuse on the willinton set up since i dont need the radio to be run off the leisure battery, i may rewire that socket up at a later date straight to the LB, but your setup sounds a good option, do you have any issues running items from the socket whilst charging?

Another reason to mount the charger in the cabin (probably passenger footwell above kicking level) is that most of these intelligent chargers still need the human touch to initiate the charging sequence, with a sequence of button pushes, unlike old fashioned chargers that just needed switching on at the mains.


Frank

Diplomat's point is a good one. "proper" Optimate chargers start charging the moment they get 240v, but the Ctek and other Aldi/Lidl jobs need you to press a button on the charger to turn it on.

Darkstar - it makes no difference. Connecting the charger to a point in the rear that goes to the battery up front, is pretty much the same as connecting the charger up front instead, give or take a very small amount of resistance. When you use appliances your charger will chuck out it's max 4 amps, and keep chugging away as best it can.

Though don't assume a charger like that will substitute a solid 12 power supply for running appliances on hookup. It will cope with small loads, but as you sail towards 4amps you will still be dependent on your leisure battery state of charge. These trickle chargers operate in several phases, of which some are pulsed - which won't be good enough to keep things like a fridge going on their own, but, in conjunction with the LB as a "buffer" it will help a great deal.

Many thanks everyone for your input,

I don't yet have a 12v/240v fridge but that is my next investment, my main concern was, would the Leisure battery get enough of a charge during my driving about to compensate for the usage of cabin lights, phone charging,tablets etc, and seeing that the zig units also charge the batteries whilst on 240v, i assumed a Ctek or similar unit would do the same, maybe i misunderstood how the zig units work.

Have to plug the 240v cable in anyway so pressing a button on the charger shouldn't be an issue, but will have a look at the Opimate ones though.

many thanks again and feel free to keep commenting.

Cheers
Ron

The power management systems, like "some" of the ZIGs and the PMSv3 provide battery charging AND a 12v regulated supply to your camper. You can't just stick 12v at a battery to charge it, it needs to be controlled - hence the need for a charger. You also can't use a charger to power high-drain appliances as it's not designed to do that.

With something like a PMSv3 - it has two main outputs - one is 12v for the battery - to charge it, the other is 12v to the camper wiring to power the appliances, lights etc. When you are hooked up to mains, the PMS will provide a nice powerful 12v supply (around 14 amps I believe) to your appliances - it will do this in place of the battery. Meanwhile, it will charge the battery at the same time. When you unplug from 240v, it lets the battery take the strain again.

I'm not an expert on Zig units but I believe some only have the 12v power supply and not the charger though I could be wrong.

Zig units do charge the LB whilst on hookup and work quite well, but they don't have a proper split charge (they just connect the two batteries in parallel), so best option is to leave the Zig set to On Site and let Willinton relay take care of charging on the move.

If you want to run serious 12v stuff whilst on hookup, you'll need something more beefy like this 45A unit I've got waiting to go in:



While it's a bit OTT, it will charge two batteries independently and it's barely going to break a sweat even when some of the heavier stuff such at the Eberspacher heater starts up.

The Zig units come in several versions, only some parallel the batteries up for charging and use.
Both the PMS3 and Zig units use a single constant voltage power supply to both charge whichever battery is selected and run any appliances / sockets.
Modern battery chargers don't use a simple constant voltage power supply, they have a much more complicated system using a range of pulse, constant voltage and constant current modes to charge a battery and really aren't suitable for running appliances / sockets on there own, they will work when the battery isn't too badly discharged but could cause problems if the L/B is flat and your trying to charge it and run other appliances at the same time !