Club 80-90 Forums

Dear all - I am planning a rewire of my van at present and am adding a leisure battery - that's all fine and I have a split-charge relay kit - voltage-sensing - from Simply Split Charge ready to go.

Thing is I'm also planning on installing a mains charger - a Muvonics 3-stage one and ideally, I would like to be able to top up the starter battery with it, as well as the leisure battery.

If I was to put the starter battery on charge on the vehicle however, it would trigger the relay. Rather than being a problem, that would actually be quite useful as it could top up the leisure battery at the same time. I'm not sure whether that might damage the relay in the long term however, or whether it could cause issues with the power supply to the lights and so on.

I could install the battery charger with it just hooked up to the leisure battery and not worry about the starter battery, but I was just curious how other people's vans are configured. Does anyone have a single mains-powered charger connected to both batteries? Should I wire it through a switch? Any advice very welcome...

Well...I've just done a little research and it seems that several of the better 'voltage sensing' relays are 'dual' sensing....let me add a quote..here goes.

Dual sensing operation - charges from starter battery to leisure battery when alternator is running and charges from leisure battery to starter battery when solar panels or mains charger are connected.

So it really doesn't matter which battery the charger is connected to as the relay will trigger from either battery hitting the 'switching' voltage (usually around 13.3 volts disconnects at 12.8 volts) although personally I would connect the mains charger to the leisure....

There are no reasons why the mains charger shouldn't be connected this way.


Martin