Battery Issues

[Dosey6767]

Hello
We've owned our camper for a week, it's a ford transit 100 SWB HiTop conversion. We drove it ov r an hour and a half home last Friday, went out in it Saturday and everything was good and well.

Last night my partner went to give it a run around and it's totally dead. The batteries on the internal panel both car and leisure are reading 12.4V but nothing is happening. You can hear it crank but dead as a dodo.

It starts from a jump from leisure to car battery?

We took it down to a local garage Saturday to check the battery and he couldn't pick up a reading but we thought it might just be because he doesn't deal with campers etc and just didn't pick the reading up correctly?

 

[donkey]

Hi
Let us know which garage you used. We can then all avoid it in future.

Geoff

 

[Dosey6767]

Right so, I think our internal panel might just be showing the surface charge and not the actual charge of the batteries.

Getting a battery charger, going to charger them both up and see if they hold

 

[irnbru]

Always a good idea to post photos to help us help you. Can you post a photo of your control panel?

 

[IRHP]

Sounds like it’s just a duff battery. When you get it started do you know what the voltage is when the engine is running?

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[autorouter]

In this situation there really is no substitute for measuring the battery voltage at the actual battery terminals with a multimeter. Any problem like a bad connection or blown fuse can make the panel read the wrong voltage. A cheap multimeter is fine for this, you can pick one up for less than a tenner at somewhere like Screwfix. With a meter, you can tell if it's a battery problem or a connection problem.

One possibility is the engine earth straps. You can bypass this with a jump lead, one end on the bodywork, other end on the engine. If that cures it, redo the earth straps.