Club 80-90 Forums

My van seems to be leaking electricity. For the past couple of days it has refused to start for me after work. When it happened on Thursday I thought it might have been the battery but after replacing that (luckily I have a brand new spare) the same thing happened on Friday.

I tried the bulb test last night and sure enough it is leaking but in the oddest way. When I use any electrical equipment powered by the starter battery the light is brightly lit but when I turn it off the bulb stays very dimly lit. Now the odd thing is that when I remove fuse #3 the bulb goes out and it then stays out when I reinsert the fuse, and so on.....

Now I know that fuse 3 is for the stereo (we have a kill switch for that) the ciggy lighter (we don't have one) and the courtesy light (don't have one of them either) so I've absolutely no idea what's causing the leak. I thought it might be a dirty switch or relay but after removing the relays nothing changes and other than the kill switch for the stereo I cant think of anything else that has a switch.

Has anyone ever had this happen to them or has anyone any idea what bit might be causing this to happen?

Many Thanks

Stereo newish? If so thats probably the leak. A lot of people fit them with both lives (one for power and one for memory) fitted to a pemanent live when the power line should only be there when ignition is turned on. Modern stereos seem to consume a huge amount even on standby. Try completely disconnecting the stereo for a week. Its a common prob - if that is indeed the cause.

The Stereo has been in it since 1993 and it's one of those old Ford ones so it's not that new at all. It has the memory wired to a permanent live (well, I presume it does as it doesn't lose the stations and key code) and the power to a switch which is connected to a permanent live so we can have the stereo on in the front when the ignition is off.

This hasn't happened before even when the van hasn't been used in a few weeks.

Thinking about it I might take a nip downstairs and give the stereo kill switch a good blast of servisol. Meant to do that last night but was so tired I forgot. I had thought it was the headlight switch and dimmer so whooped it out to clean. Taking it apart was easy but it took me ages to get the blasted thing back together - all those fiddly wee contacts, springs and a ball bearing.

Could be a leaky capacitor in the stereo if you've had it a while. I have a collection of electronic items suffering from that and there have been faulty batches of caps over the years. Not saying it is that, but if you disconnect non-essentials you can often find the culprit fairly quickly.

Well I never got to the bottom of the problem and now wish I had. As a workaround I just removed the fuse for the stereo at night and this seemed to work.

Last week I accidentally forgot to remove the fuse but when I returned to start he van some 3 days later it started up no problem. I only realised after driving for about an hour that the problem seemed to have cured it's self - or so I thought.

Last night I thought I'd give the eber a wee run but everything was dead, no lights no nothing, just a dim red LED on the CF9. I switched it over fro the leisure to the car battery and still everything was dead, lights, eber, everything? When I'm diving the van I usually have the Zig switched to charge the leisure battery so it's always ready.

Didn't get a chance to have a poke around last night but when the van returns later today I will. In the meantime does anyone have any idears as to what may be the cause of the problem?

Many thanks

Clock (timepiece...GMT type thingy) is usually on that fuse. Could be something wrong in that area.
Mike