Electrical issue with leisure battery and blowing fuse

[dickwalsh]

Hi,

I have had the bongo for a few years, and to be honest, the electrics with the leisure battery have been spotty at best. However, what seems to be happening now is that a fuse keeps blowing in the fuses beside the relay switch. The fuse, as far as I can tell, is linked to the Radio & Cigarette Lighters etc.

I am no expert at this at all, so I was wondering if anyone could shed any light on this.

This is the fuse that keeps blowing and it seems to be linked to the blue wire in the fuse board.

I am not sure if the blue wire is in the right location, i.e. the top or the bottom of the fuse...the white wire seems to be working when there is power in the battery. Which leads me to the other issue. When this fuse has blown or is not in there, the leisure battery does not charge....does this give any clues?

I know electrical faults can be very hard to figure out and my information is spotty at best so please ask away and I will do my best to answer.

If I charge the battery manually, things do work, but the fuse will eventually blow and then the battery will slowly drain as things like the clock etc. use the battery.

Hopefully this makes some sense or triggers something that might help me find the cause of the problem.

Cheers

[g8dhe]

OK well the Blue wire into the old fuse box picks up on the +12v from the battery (upper connector) - this is NOT normally how it would be wired, it should be plugged into the lower of the two connectors as this then runs to the Radio and Sockets and other ancillary circuits, this way the LB powers via the fuse the original circuits. Connected they way you have it causes the starter battery to be connected via the fuse to the LB and hence why the fuse blows as trying to charge the LB directly and hence blows the fuse.
To correct pull the Blue wire out from the upper connector and plug it in in the lower connector, all the upper connectors connect via the ignition switch to the SB, the lower connectors connect to the actual devices being powered from that circuit. When correctly connected the LB powers the two circuits you have the White wire providing the un-switched circuits (Radio backup, cabin lights etc) and the Blue wire powers the Radio when the radio is switched at the radio, the power sockets front and back and other ancillary circuits.

[dickwalsh]

Thank you for this! I will give that a go and see if that helps the situation.

The odd thing is I just found an old photo of the fuse panel from 2023 and the blue wire is still in there but it's not as black so something definitely has gone wrong there. I know as well we used the van a fair bit in 2023 and 2024 and things did work but I can't remember if I pulled a wire and then thought "I better take a picture of this" and put it back in the wrong place and perhaps it just took a while for the fuse to blow that time. I do recall the first time I noticed the dodgy fuse, it was not totally blown but the plastic was melted.

Either way if it's in the wrong place now then moving it might just fix the problem. I know when the LB was low the radio etc. would not work when the van was off and would work when the van was on but now (even with a fuse in there) the radio only works when the LB has a charge so perhaps the cable being in the wrong side caused the radio to stop working when the engine is on as well...

Thanks for the feedback, I will get a look at this today and see how I get on!