Leisure battery wiring?!!?!

[dalenruth]

Hi all,
Been a while since I've been in the site but I hv had my van for about 3 years and not really bothered to do much apart from drive and sleep in it. Anyway I decided I need to get a leisure battery fitted and wonders if anyone can advise a good and cheap way? I have seen various kits but does anyone have any advice? Are these kits good enough?
Cheers
Dale

[CovKid]

http://wiki.club8090.co.uk/index.php/Ca ... it_charger" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Get yourself some 80 amp rated power cable (minimum) and a 40 amp relay. Cheap to buy and not hard to fit. Thats all thats in mine and my leisure charges fine.

By all means try a smart relay later if you feel the need, but the above is readily available even in local stores/shops and will do the job.

[dalenruth]

Thanks for your help

[CovKid]

Just make sure you fit proper terminals to everything though. And use grommets if you have to drill holes and feed cable through anywhere. Cheapest place for terminals (locally) is toolstation (google them). Depending on length of run you could just use budget jump leads as sold by Wilkinsons/Wilco and other places as they'd be man enough for the job. Just remove clamps and split them if they're in a figure-of-8 type arrangement. Alternatively buy a few metres somewhere. Relay about a fiver depending where you go, or free if you've got one at home somewhere.

Thats the budget way and both Hakuna Matata and myself charge our leisures that way with no issues whatsoever. You could buy a kit but cable lengths may not be enough. Besides its often cheaper to source yourself or recycle what you or someone else may have already. If you want to power something whle driving only (like a 12v powered fridge or even 3-way fridge on 12v, you'll need a 5 terminal relay.

When I originally fitted mine I didn't have two pennies to rub together and used a conventional relay. Its still there, and still working fine. That was 6 years ago. I could fit a 'smart' one as they generally require less cables but as it works fine I've never bothered.