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I want to have a leisure battery fitted in my Ford Tourneo (basically a 2014 Transit with seats).
I understand that there is space for a second battery under the driver's seat.
Anyone got any experience of doing this? Did it interfere with the stop/start ignition? Can anyone recommend somewhere in South London/Surrey?
Ford owners forums will probably have the answers. The Vauxhall’s equivalent was good when I fitted one to my Vivaro. Pretty straight forward job
Yes there is space.
No it wont **** with the ignition
Its very much a DIY job, just buy the kit.
if you have stop start and its a transit you already have 2 batterys under the seat.
if you have stop start and want a proper isolated leisure battery to run aux systems off in the back then you will need a battery to battery charger as a simple split charge relay will upset the canbus systems in the van.
they dont make em like they used to !
Whilst we are on the topic of leisure batteries, can I hijack this?
My caravan has a feed for the fridge and charging the battery driven from the voltage sensing relay. All normal so far, but the fuse was blown to the battery. But every fuse I tried blew instantly, even 30A (just done for testing purposes). So why is my battery drawing so much current from the alternator to charge? It wasn't dead flat.
Molgrips, silly question as i have no expertise in these things but, is it definitely *drawing* that sort of current and not shorting somewhere so the fuse is effectively bridging terminals on the battery?
Depends what size the battery is, it's state of discharge and the total output available from the alternator.
As pointed out already there may be a short somewhere. To shed some light on the this. My motorhome leisure battery charger is capable of providing 18A when plugged into shore power. The leisure battery (when discharged) charging straight from the alternator draws between 30 and 40 amps for a few minutes. The main fuse to protect the charging circuit is 50A.
Try charging the leisure battery independently and then connecting it up again and see if the 30 fuse survives.
D.
Ohms law. Resistance in the system should be very low - the largest contributor should be the internal resistance of the battery, but for LA that is fairly low. If there's a significant difference in voltage between the charging system and the battery then you'll get a high current. Check out the difference in voltage on your car when the engine is running - the alternator voltage is significantly higher than the battery voltage when the engine isn't running.
Can you charge the leisure battery from the car battery when the engine isn't running - that might give enough boost to the voltage to decrease the current enough when the engine is running? Though personally I might just get the multimeter out - check the voltage of the leisure battery and the voltage of the alternator output. Check the resistance of the leads. The only difficult bit is measuring the internal resistance of the battery, but you can do that by measuring voltage drop using a known load - though for the purposes of the exercise google should give a good enough ball park figure. I suspect you'll find a higher rated fuse is needed and is normal.
very good kits from TravelVolts.net
Super advice on kit too.
From my limited research lately because you have stop start you'll need a DC-DC recharge system rather than the normal voltage based leisure battery. I've looked into it for my new to me caddy and now I've bought one it already has a battery under the passenger seat which previous company have installed. I now need to figure out where and how they've done it so I don't blow something and to make sure they've done it correctly!!
It's easy enough to look under the seat to see how many batteries you've got, videos on YouTube showing which bolts to undo.
There's space for two 110 sized (315x175x175) batteries without removing the cover.
If you want to save lots of money a simple 10A switch mode (buck) converter from eBay is much cheaper than a battery to battery charger and will current limit. Haven't tried this myself though.
Our split charge relay is rated 30A, and so far hasn't blown the fuse even with 260Ah of discharged leisure batteries to charge.
Search for the Transit Custom Body Builder Manual (All manufacturers have to produce them now), as it will give all the official options, regarding connecting extra batteries in.
As has been said, a Stop/Start spec transit should have two batteries already, unless they changed things for the Tourneo. Depending on what you want to power, you might get away with just taking a feed from the existing power connection points, which should only draw power from the auxiliary battery anyway, leaving the start battery charged. I'd add a low voltage cut out relay though, as if you really flatten the auxiliary battery, the ignition won't power on to get started again, regardless of how well charged the start battery is.
Yeah I think something is messed up here with the wiring. It shouldn't draw more than 30A to charge thebattery. Polarity might be mixed up when I was rewiring something.