Club 80-90 Forums

I have got to wire up my bus with two leisure batteries soon and was wondering if anyone had any advice on this. I have several questions

First of all Is there any recommeded Power Control or distrubution units that I could use?. I have already brought a JK 10 unit fuse box but this looks a little basic.

Secondly, is there a way of establishing whether I have a ZIG unit fitted. I was thinking of hooking the van up and then putting a tester on to my battery to see if there is an increase in voltage. Would this work?

I think my basic problem is that I have no idea how my van has been wired up and I am finding it really diffcult to trace the wiring from the alternator back to the split charging relay (Which i cant find) and then on to the starter battery and the current leisure battery.

Any help would gratfully received

Cheers

Hi. Probably not what you want to hear but here's how I did ours;

Drove to a local camper builder / converter / service centre and got them to remove everything (old buzzin black box, German 2 pin hook up, cabling etc...etc...) and fit a "proper" system. It cost around £200 all done, if my memory seves me right (which to be fair it often doesn't!!).
I opted for this after reading and re-reading and trying to absorb as much as I could from here, elsewhere on the web and books about camper conversions which, whilst making sense eventually, just seemed to be all based around the fact that you are starting from scratch and doing everything correctly yourself. Whenever there has been the input of a keen previous owner, I think it's best to let someone else take it all back to standard and start again.

I think it should be fairly apparent if there is a ZIG in your van, a control panel of some sorts will be on show; however we didn't and still don't have one. Ours now has a new charger, circuit box with breakers and they wrapped all the wiring very neatly in conduit and routed it sensibly out of the way. The fridge now works correctly on 240v, 12v when driving and gas. The charger keeps the leisure battery topped up whilst hooked up with a "float" charge and best of all the whole system was installed by a certificated electrician so no trouble with the insurance IF anything goes wrong.

I'm not trying to put you off doing things yourself, and I daresay that you no doubt have much more knowledge of these things than I have, but it might just be worth getting a quote or two before you buy all the stuff yourself to see how much you'll save in costs compared with much less hassle and a warranty.

Good luck with it whichever way you decide to go, just thought I'd suggest an alternative



Andi

Thnaks for that. Somehow I think you might be right. Ill go and get a quote and see how much it might be

Cheers

try aztec campers in swansea. they used to convert wedges.

ask for terry.