Battery setup???? (1 Viewer)

[treeman]

Hi all, my first post so please be gentle..

I bought my '86 Classical Designs converted Renault Master recently and been trying to learn and familiarise myself on all the workings. By reading many posts on hear and some paperwork that came with the van I'm slowly getting there.

The batteries do confuse me though. There are 2 x 12v batteries under the bonnet and both look like normal 80ah car batteries - not a great start. Then the batteries appear to be wired in parallel to each other which has got me confused - why has the van got 2 batteries in parallel? Any ideas

Hope this picture below helps.

Van has Zig CF8 panel from original install but I think a few changes may have been made to wiring in the last 20 years.

 

[pappajohn]

Hi Treeman and welcome.

multiple batteries are wire pos to pos/ neg to neg on all batteries.

this gives you 12v but doubles/triples (depending on number and capacity of each) the usable amperage. ie: 3 x 100ah batteries will give you 300ah @ 12volts

wiring neg to pos will give 100ah @ 24v or 36v (depending on number of batteries)

all batteries should, ideally, be the same capacity and age.

and yes, they do look like standard car batteries to me which aren't really suitable for leisure use as they dont like deep discharge.

 

[treeman]

Thanks for the reply Pappa, that makes sense.

My thoughts are though that having read the Zig CF8 manual and wiring diagram, I guessed the true idea of having 2 batteries is that one starts the car and the other (leisure) runs the electrics, the wiring diagram shows them wired separately for this purpose. My setup seems to use both batteries for everything - when I switch on the internal lights the voltage on both batteries drops - which I'm concerned could easily end up with dead batteries and therefore non-starting van.

I'm concerned someone has changed the wiring over the years.

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[pappajohn]

certainly sounds like someone has been playing and cocked it up or its a very poor conversion by the converters..

engine and habitation batteries should, as you say, be separate with a split charge relay to charge the leisure from the engine when running.