Club 80-90 Forums

Hi all.....Was thinking of installing a switch for my stereo whereby I can run it from the leisure battery whilst pitched, and the van battery whilst driving....Its currently wired into my vans battery so how would I go about achieving this? I'm no wizz with electrics hence the need for advice, but I'm sure with a few words of wisdom I'll be fine cos I'm guessing it really can't be too hard...................................can it?

Cheers all and happy chuggin

does your leisure battery get charged up from the alternator?

This is a very reasonable question after our totally flat battery episode at Bustypes show recently which was due to our ZIG unit Not switching over to our leisure battery because of a poor fused link to the Zig .......

Infact IF your system switches properly on to the leisure battery circuit when parked up you should have nothing to worry about when running your radio off the main battery during your stay unless you have some kind of extreme sub woofer/amp combination to power up, even then your leisure battery would get battered after a short time.

A silent generator is the quick fix here and solves any problems when the option of a hook up is not available.

Regards


Fritz,,,,,,,,

no kev i dont think it does.....gets charged whilst hooked up via my zig unit I believe....this is why I want to be able to run the stereo off it when I'm hooked up.....no more carting a portable along with us!

first of macc you need to wire up your batteries into a split charge system, so that the leisure is charged up when the engine is running! next you have two options,

on a switch to opperate as you mentioned or permanantly wire the stereo in to the leisure battery!

peronally i would wire the stereo to the leisure battery, infact the easiest way of doingthis is to run a fused feed from your leisure batt to the existing fuse box, terminate this end with a male spade. find and remove the fuse that powers the radio, use a multi meter to find out which of the two holes the fuse slots in to is the 12v one, push the male spade into the other one! this way your lights, cig lighter and radio are all powered from the leisure battery.

this way when the engine is running it is chargeing the leisure batt and as such is effectively running the radio from the main battery/engine, and when you turn the engine off it you are already using the leisure batt for the radio, so no switch to forget about!

details of split chargeing on the wiki, top left, hammer icon! good luck

Dave, run that by me tomorrow coz ours needs changing over as well.

we have done this in our van. Well horace83 did it for us actually...
he has put instructions on his website
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/georgina_s ... _2_LB.html

Well I've been and done it....and it works!!

I followed the diagram in the wiki and now have a nice discreet switch next to the stereo, and can now run it from the leisure battery whilst hooked up, so no danger of flattening any batteries!!

One happy camper.....................

The bits cost £11 from Halfwits and its taken me 3hours to do (including tea breaks,ciggie breaks,kitkat breaks...etc etc

Cheers for all the advice n happy chugging