Club 80-90 Forums

Hi there, looking to fit a Truma heater under the r&r seat in my westy, to free up additional space I was going to hard wire my ctek mxs 5.0 in it's place as it's silent too. Is there an easy way to utilise the existing wiring, if so can anyone advise how to do so?

TIA

All I did to replace our BBB with MXS5 (although it'd work with any similar charger), was to snip the normal mains plug off the CTek, and snip the eyelet-end charge cable. Then snip the multiplugs off both 12v and mains cables for the original. Choccyblock connectors, and attach the Westy multiplugs to the CTek charger. Mains end is easy and obvious.

The 12v is a two-from-three, since the original Westy charger does both batteries. I just ignored the starter battery completely, since I'd already moved the radio/clock/lights over to the leisure, so +12v to the leisure +ve, earth to earth. With any smart charger, you can't easily do the starter battery, because it goes to the split relay, which needs to be fed +12v to kick in - and the charger won't feed +12v until it "sees" something needing it.

So the only mod to the van is the bit between the original Westy plugs - the CTek is just plug-in using the entirety of the original wiring. If I want to use the CTek on the starter battery, I can - using the croc clips, by just swapping the leads at the CTek multiplug, which is before the Westy multiplug.

Although excellent chargers, in some circumstances these low powered versions could be overwhelmed.

Simple maths....more going out than is being put back in.....probably not an issue at a weekend show but could be a real problem on a week long camp in the south of France.

Generally you need to fit a leisure charger that can easily keep up with and marginally exceed the greatest demand that is likely to be put on the leisure battery. That is why most modern camper converters will use 8 amp plus units (10 amp seem to be quite popular)

Martin