Bongo Fury

Thought I'd use the new sat nav in the Bongo today. Tried plugging into the lighter socket and there was no power. Tried the rear socket - same result. After faffing about checking fuses, I thought I'd check the voltage at the socket and the meter registered 1.0v. Hmm.

Then tested the leisure battery and found it was 1.0v as well. Oh dear.

The Bongo has been driven quite a lot in the last couple of weeks so I'm surprised the battery is so low. Is it worth me taking the Leisure battery off and recharging manually or do I need to do more investigation? I'm sure I used the socket at some point this year (the water pump on my drop-in kitched is powered by it) but can't really remember when.

Nothing else is on that could be drawing power.

Thanks in advance for any advice

Is the radio powered by the leisure battery?
Mine is and the memory wire draws far too much power so its disconnected

Sounds very much like the L/B isn't being charged. Check out the two in-line fuses from each battery to the relay, they are often the cause of the problem - if you need to replace them first charge the L/B as otherwise you may blow it again.

Radio isn't off the lesiure battery. It appears the only things the LB powers are the lighter sockets. I'll see if I can locate the inline fuses to the relay - not sure where the realy is so I'll have to do some following wires.

In the meantime I'll take the LB out and put it on charge overnight.

Did some cable tracing and found the charging unit. It's a "self-switching combi master" and appears to be maflunctioning as it isn't outputing any charging current.

Off to find a new one on the net!

willinton on ebay.

sets the standard for split charge relays

Bought the willinton one from eBay. Vast improvement in quality from the old guff that was in there. Stripped out the old stuff and had the new one in in about half an hour.

Not sure about the lesiure battery though - left it on charge for a few days (on my super-intelligent fancy battery charger) and it flagged it as failed. Seemed to have an 80% charge though. Stuck it back in the Bongo to see how it goes. If it fails to charge then I suppose I'll have to change it.