Leisure battery installation and Split Charge circuit.
Part 6- A Real Installation.
Well
folks, i finally did it. I got round to finishing installing my leisure
battery. And it is a cracking bit of work, even if I say so myself ;-)
I ended
up giving in and picking up a relay from Halfords for a whopping
£16. OK, I could have got one from a scrappy for nothing but
there were three reasons why I didnt:
1, I had
the money on me, and figured why not get a new relay that will last the
life of the van.
2, It is pre-wired so that you do not need to worry about what type and
colour of cable to buy.
3, The wires are fixed, and not connected by spades which can work
loose and cause shorts.
You will
note later that the relay has two thick power wires running out of the
relay - Red and Dark Green. The dark green is to connect to a fridge to
give it 12v when driving, but to kill the power to the fridge when
parked as this would flatten the battery very quickly!
Then a
big gulp and take a drill to your pride and joy - 2 little holes in the
RH side of the engine bay, 2 self tapping screws and bingo. A solid
mount in just the right place.
(NOTE: Make
sure you do not push the drill in too far and that you know where the
fuel tank is located!!!)
The relay screwed into place on the RH side
of the engine bay.
Note that the short, black earth wire can just be clamped under one
of the self-tapping screws for a good connection. Crimp an eyelet on
to it first, mind.
Once this is done, take the lime-green wire with the fuse holder on it and connect it to the positive of the vehicle battery. It should reach without being tight. Clamp it down good and hard now.
The purple "trigger" wire can now be run to the alternator over the holey panel above the engine bay. It's cable-tie time!!
The cable ties in place over the engine bay
to take the alternator wire.
Thanks to the person who though the holey stuff was a good idea. It is
perfect for cable ties.
The alternator wire should run neatly across these ties and "drop" over the alternator where a faithful old scotch block connector can be used to "intercept" the little wire that dishes out 12v when the alternator is doing its thing, i.e. charging!
Here you can see the purple cable running to the alternator. Neat, huh?
This wire drops down neatly into place. Use
a scotch block to connect
the purple wire to the wire coming off the alternator. Scotchblocks
allow
you to cut 1 wire into the other without causing any damage to the
original.
The next job is to run the red and green wires neatly over to the other side of the engine bay. At first, I though about using the holey plate again, but then realised that there were some metal clips in the bay just above the engine hatch.
Here the red and green wires are being
clipped up on the RH side of the
engine bay and then fed into the clips
to start their journey across the engine
bay...
..And along and along (this was taken from inside the engine bay...)
Until you get to the LH side of the engine
bay. Use a cable tie to do the
last little bit onto the holey plate bit.
Guide the wires underneath the wheel well
(you might want to put the battery
in this side of the engine bay - I wanted mine under the R&R bed!)
Drill a small hole in the drain grommet to feed the wires into the van.
Like this. This is inside the wheel well inside the van.
Run the cables under the R&R bed to your leisure battery.
My
leisure battery sits inside a purpose built plastic box from Towsure
that
comes complete with a nice red lid. Drill a coupla holes in the bottom
and use
two woodscrews to fix it to the floor so it wont s-l-i-d-e about!
Here,
you can see the earth wire of the leisure battery in the quick-relaease
clamp.
Note that I have reversed one half of the clamp to make a tight fit for
the thin cable.
The live
side of the leisure battery clamp with a couple of very nice fuseholders
from Towsure - you will need to buy 2 30amp blade fuses from Halfords
for these.
One fuse connects to the main feed from the relay (the thick green
wire) and the other
connects to the secondary fusebox feed. This protects both sides of the
circuit from
fire caused by shorts or overloads. Very sensible!