leisure battery - voltage but no current

[Haddie]

Cheers again Kedishan.

Well this evening I thought I'd try to bypass the +ve wiring. Brought a roll of wire home so that I could run it direct from the battery to the zig unit. Guess what? Same again. Tried running it from the cranking battery....still no joy.

As a punt I ran it from the -ve terminal to a -ve input on the zig unit. Guess what....the system sprang into life. As there was also a -ve from the other leisure battery at that junction I wasn't sure whether I was getting the right circuit. The battery in the engine bay gets recharged by the alternator and the one in the back is only from EHU. Switching the engine on showed me that it was definitely the engine one.


Not got a clue how this has worked previously....but unless someone thinks that this just proves that there is an 'earth-side' fault I think I need to be routing a -ve cable back to the zig unit?

Whaddya think????

[Kedishen]

The old negative ran from battery to underneath the passenger headlight? If yes, clean it up and make sure its nipped up.

Interesting how it held voltage, but the connection is not good enough to pass any voltage. In transits we rust :/

[Haddie]

The crank battery has an earth to the headlight. The leisure is earthed direct to the gearbox...nowt to the headlight.

Got some 30amp wire now..looks like a job for the weekend especially as ouir "heatwave" seems to have bypassed Manchester lol.

Excuse me for being cheeky Kedishen...but I have the leisure in the bay that is charged by the alternator and protected by an isolator switch. The leisure in the back is only charged whilst on EHU. Do you think it would be possible to link BOTH to the crank battery via voltage sensitive relays or would that have belly-up written all over it?

[Kedishen]

Yup, its completely possible.

I presume you want to keep the two leisure batteries seperate.

Get some 6mm cable (or you can double up with some smaller cable) and run it from engine battery via a voltage sensing relay (or a switched relay from alternator) to leisure battery in back, in line fuses rated at 10amp each end within 15cm of battery. Beef up the ground connection to equivalent size. If you double up on cabling, keep them the same length.

As I mentioned before, I use 2x6mm cable, but I am charging a twin battery setup.