benniferj
Member Since: 20 Oct 2016
Location: Basingstoke
Posts: 361
 
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| td5 - incredibly odd parasitic drain issue... | |
Hi all
So I appreciate that additional electronics on any vehicle can be a minefield to diagnose so I'll just stick up some basics and see what suggestions anyone can come up with! - in short, I'm getting drain on my primary battery from a diesel heater thats only connected to my leisure battery....
Overview:
- 110 td5 csw 2003.
- twin batteries. one runs main vehicle electrics, one is leisure for accessories. These share an earth and are earth linked. The live is linked via a manual isolator which I occasionally turn on to charge the leisure.
- I have voltmeters on both batteries. These are normally off and I turn on to check occasionally. Neither draw any power when off.
- Additional electronics such as light bars, winch, roof tent 12v etc run off of the leisure battery and have lives and earths to the leisure battery terminals only.
SO
Last week I installed a diesel heater in the rear of the vehicle. Its one of the well received Amazon Chinese jobbies. It works great and electrically, simply has a live and earth and aside from that, just fuel, exhaust and air feeds. To tidy up some circuits on the car I used 16mm cable to run a live from the leisure battery up to a fuse board in the rear of the vehicle by the fridge and diesel heater. This has its own 80a breaker back at the battery end as extra protection.
Since installing it, I have had a weak start after leaving power to the heater on overnight, I leave it's control panel on so that I can remotely active it to pre warm while im in the house (ideal with this current cold weather)
I have of course looked at my voltmeter to both batteries (unlinked, so acting independantly) and my PRIMARY battery is sitting low, like 11v. The LEISURE remains at 12.6ish. Once starting the car, the PRIMARY then goes up to 14.6ish and charges. I haven't even bothered linking the batteries as the LEISURE has not drained enough to be noticeable.
To be honest I'm absolutely baffled, I am 100% certain the aux fuse board is fed from the correct LEISURE battery yet the primary is getting drained and they are definitely not left linked.
I have then to double check, left the diesel heater switch OFF overnight and then no drain and no starting issues and still at 12.6v by morning.
Can anyone think what would be causing this?
As I write this up, the only thing I can note is that I have not run a direct earth from leisure battery to the rear fuseboard- the devices connected to that share a fuse board earth directly to metalwork on the rear tub (basically onto the obsolete rear bench seat mountings which were giving me a solid multimeter'd live-earth reading)
But surely that earth is decent as both batteries share a earth which links to chassis anyway???
I have suitable cable to add that direct earth if worthwhile??? Insta: @thebenjordan4x4
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10th Feb 2021 10:14pm |
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