dubdubz said:
there is no fail safe if you've left the van in gear and you start it without checking!!
I suppose you 'could' rig up an internal light that is only on without ignition - to act as an idiot light, or a cct that allows a certain battery drain and then cuts off the supply.......?
these old buses for me, are about simplicity..so perhaps a warning sticker do not switch when engine NOT running...will suffice if you think that simple instructions/rules can't be followed????
let me explain, in simple terms, how i see the solution to the OP.
it's a fact (not a matter of opinion) that the 'main' battery does not like being run down until it's flat... in fact do it too many times and you're going to shorten its life expectancy i.e. knacker it. conversely, a 'leisure' battery is delighted to be slowly drained over and over and over again, but hates sending out big bursts of current i.e. what happens when you try and turn the engine over, so it only makes sense to keep the two differing battery types, and the differing roles they play, completely separate.
now, given that the OP mentioned that he had a certain amount of equipment already, it seemed to me that a system basically the same as the one i have in my bus would be ideal.
the 'main' battery does all the jobs that it would do in an ordinary car... cranking the engine, headlights, windscreen wipers and so on. the 'leisure' battery is connected to it via an ignition-controlled relay, which only provides a charge when the engine is running, and effectively isolates them when the vehicle is parked (in my beloved wilderness for instance).
the leisure battery, via a separate fusebox, provides auxiliary power for such campsite essentials as interior lighting, stereo & associated amplification, refrigerator, propex heater, and maybe one day, should the need ever arise, an inverter to power a 240V hairdryer for my luxurious 'mane'.
one wire is run under the bus to the aux. fusebox at the front, and then each aux. 'device' is connected to that.
and that's it... like you say, these things ARE simple; that's the beauty of them.
you drive, and the uprated alternator provides sufficient current to keep both of them fully charged. you park up, the relay is de-energised, and anything you want to do whilst camping; have a cold beer, have a warm cuddle, whatever, is powered by the leisure battery
automatically no switching no fiddling with wires or plugs or anything else... no warning lights, buzzers or stickers... is the term *plug and play* in 21st century computer vernacular ?
the capacity of
my leisure battery and the output of
my alternator means that i've NEVER run out of 'juice' at a show or whilst camping, whilst at the same time i know that however pissed or whatever i get over the week(end) the van is ALWAYS going to start on the key... that's what i mean by 'fail-safe' - nothing we error-prone humans do (within reason - like i said earlier, you can cause havoc with a fusebox and a kit-kat wrapper :x ) is going to endanger the likelihood of the van starting when it's time to roll out.
(now, in the hugely unlikely instance of the leisure battery becoming flat, and us desperately needing to hear
just one more belle & sebastian track, or my hair's not
quite dry, i know that i can disconnect one spade connector, piggyback it onto one an inch or so away, and use the 'main' battery as a temporary 'liferaft' in much the same way as the apollo 13 crew used the lunar module to limp back to earth... not an ideal situation, but *any port in a storm* as they say. this of course defeats the object of my fail-safe installation, but 'emergencies' have been flagged up by other posters, so this would be a once-in-a-lifetime solution rather than an everyday occurrence :| )
now of course there are more ways to skin a cat, or wire a bus, and i understand that some people are understandably daunted by vehicular or indeed just electricity in general, but i honestly cannot see a way of improving that system... it's easy to install, it's safe and it takes ALL human error out of the equation, which is, to my mind, the definition of a perfect installation ?
irrelevant, seeing as it never leaves the garage, but that's me in a nutshell :roll:
