As soon as I touched the wires a large flash followed by an acrid smell of melting wires with smoke coming from under the drivers seat (It's where the leisure battery is situated)
I quickly removed the battery cover and I was able to quickly remove the earth wires. There were three black earth wires, two fairly thick and one thin one that went directly to a cigarette lighter socket that is mounted on the side of the seat base. The thin wire had melted, I checked the radio wiring setup and found a taped up connection on the live feed had separated and earthed itself via the dash board.
After a cup of tea to settle my shaking hands, I decided to rewire the entire radio installation properly, as I was going to be running new cable around I decided to wire the radio to a spare "AUX" switch that is on my ZIG control panel, I have two spare aux switches, so this would enable me to either have the radio running from the starter battery or the leisure battery or indeed totally isolated by use of the selector switch on the ZIG
(Up=Starter Battery, Middle=OFF and Down = Leisure Battery)
I don't really see the need for the memory function on the radio as even when the leisure battery was disconnected the radio stations were all there when I reconnected everything so both live wires are now wired into one feed.
When I connected everything up the radio wouldn't work.....unless the engine was running, strange I thought so I tried flicking the selector switch on the ZIG to leisure battery and it worked OK, then I switched it to the Starter Battery and nothing except the split charge relay clicked as if it was being "energized"....
I disassemble the split charge relay thinking it had been damaged when the short circuit happened and found that if I pushed the contacts as though the relay was being "energized" the radio would work from the starter battery but as soon as I let go the power was cut off!
It appeared that the radio was now only working when the charging circuit was active, I rechecked all my connections and was sure everything was correct, I then investigated the engine bay and starter battery, thinking perhaps another wire had melted down that end too, I have a diesel so the starter is in the engine bay. Everything seemed fine so I traced the wires back, looking for a dodgy bit, well I found the problem was a blown fuse!!
Hiding discreetly just inside the rear of the van tucked behind the end of the wardrobe was an inline fuse of 30amps that had blown, it was for the live feed from the starter battery to the Zig unit. I replaced it and everything now works as it should. I didn't have a spare 30amp blade fuse so popped in a 10 amp just to check and the starter battery side of the Zig unit is now receiving power. Does anybody know if I will need to replace the 30amp fuse with a similiar sized one or would a smaller fuse suffice. The only things running from the zig unit are LED lights, normal lights (car bulbs in them) and the radio, we do have a sink but I removed the tap when the micro switch in the tap broke just after we got the van, we prefer to use a small free standing water container anyway and the sink is not used at the moment.
So another exciting day in the world of campervan ownership
Nev