Bongo Fury

Hi,

I've been a Bongo owner for less than 6 months. Van has been driving fine on short trips up to now.

Loaded recently up to head away for the weekend and after about 30 mins of easy motorway driving, the 4W ABS warning light came on but the engine continued running fine. I should add that the weather was mild but with sporadic heavy rain showers.

Next thing the speedo and tacho dials failed, followed by the air-con control and radio.

I pulled into a service station to stop the engine and hopefully reset the problem.

However when I tried to restart the battery lacked enough charge to start so I had to get a quick jump start.

Everything started up fine and initially all controls were working again but the ABS light quickly lit again and after a few 100 metres all the instruments failed again.

As I wasn't too far from home, I decided to head back as the engine was still running fine. During the short trip home, all the electrics (lights, wipers, windows...) all progressively failed to work and engine limited shifting into top gear.

I tried a jump start the following day and again the engine sounds fine but all dials and electrics are struggling to work.

Any help/advice greatly appreciated.

Cheers
Colm

Alternator has failed, hence the battery running down resulting in the lights coming on then going out and unable to start again.

I would go with the obvious 12v system failing ie starter battery going flat. As per other post, could well be the alternator. However would have expected that you would have had warning of that via charge light coming on or not going out. This will be an easy check for an auto electrician. If you charge the battery up and get the engine started again you can check the alternator is charging by measuring the voltage across the battery.
I have a meter constantly reading my alternator output & mine usually give a charge of 14.2 volts. So could do the check yourself if you can get or do have a meter. If charge is ok, then could be a faulty battery etc.

Cheers

windywatson wrote:I would go with the obvious 12v system failing ie starter battery going flat. As per other post, could well be the alternator. However would have expected that you would have had warning of that via charge light coming on or not going out. This will be an easy check for an auto electrician. If you charge the battery up and get the engine started again you can check the alternator is charging by measuring the voltage across the battery.
I have a meter constantly reading my alternator output & mine usually give a charge of 14.2 volts. So could do the check yourself if you can get or do have a meter. If charge is ok, then could be a faulty battery etc.

Cheers

check the charge warning light comes on before starting to make sure bulb OK.

There are conditions when the Charge light won't light and yet there is a fault that means charging is poor and intermittent ...
I had it last year, which caused much head scratching!! Basically one of the 3 arms of the the three phase alternator develops faulty leaking diodes, which in effect cancels out the charging current, but the alternator still sees a current being produced and so doesn't light the Charge lamp to indicate the problem.

When the diode pack went on my V6 the ignition light would go out ... but at higher revs than normal, and the battery was going 'flat' ..

I knew something was wrong when the rev counter / speedo started to behave erratically ..

Hooking a volt meter up proved the alternator was not producing lecky for the battery ..

How do I easily check my battery voltage

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Digital-12V-2 ... 5d5b26558d

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/12V-24V-Digit ... 1a056e0745

this only works on the battery connected to the socket, you may have the LB connected to the socket

Go for a proper multi-meter, not a cig socket one, its just not flexible enough.
Maplin are a good source, http://www.maplin.co.uk/search?text=Mul ... tsPerPage=
If you can afford it then a "DC Clamp" current meter is ideal, make sure its DC and not AC but yes a lot more expensive.