radio running of starter battery?

[janieh]

Hi all

camping last week, we arrived on the Wednesday night, and didn't try and move the van until Saturday. By which time, the starter battery was dead! oops.

Anyway, we've got a 1988 westy, and think that most things are running off the leisure battery. My guess is that it's just the radio running off the starter battery? Can anyone confirm this is right? and how long do you think it should be able to last before we need to drive around to charge it. Or should we investigate getting it wired up to the leisure battery?

Thanks
Jane

[CovKid]

Well we can;t confirm your wiring set up since we can't see it, but you could check where the power wires go. Theres every chance that it is indeed running off your starter battery. I actually run two starter batteries (the second operating as a pseudo-leisure battery) but basically its there to make sure my starter battery is never flattened by the radio. Had no probs since. Both the power and the low-power (one thats permanently live to remember stations) are both on the leisure.

Other worthwhile mods are changing brake and sidelight bulbs for LED types. They consume much less power and if you do have to leave them on (ie when/if you've broken down on some unlit lane from hell, or even forgotten to turn off your lights), they shouldn't drain your battery as quickly.

[Red Westie]

Standard Westy wiring UNFORTUNATELY has the interior lights (cab lights) and radio running off the starter battery.
There is a relatively simple wiring modification that you can do to swap the feed to the leisure which eliminates this problem.

Read and follow these links:

https://club8090.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.p ... d#p7405125" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Martin

[janieh]

Thanks everyone. Yes, it's a westy and I think everything is still as original, so I guess that's how the wiring works at the moment. I'll definitely investigate changing the wiring to run off the aux battery.

Cheers,
Jane