Bongo Fury

Hi all

Has anyone used one of these in their Bongo ?

I have one, plugged it into the lighter socket and it powered up the radio.

I can turn the radio off, does this mean it will now trickle the battery ?

Anyway, great forum. Only picked up our Bongo on Saturday.

Its a 1998 2.5 v6 in white.

Had a great time parked up in Swanage today.

All the best

Nick & Family

yes, I use one because my van is often parked up for a couple of days at mountain bike races. I tend to use the bigger solar panels - my aim is to get at least 1A through them on a reasonably bright day and that keeps the phone charger and the wifi hotspot going without drawing on the leisure battery.

I currently have the "briefcase" maplin http://www.maplin.co.uk/12v-24v-13w-sol ... ase-228539 but am going to have a look at this kit to see if it folds up http://www.maplin.co.uk/60w-solar-power-kit-223250 and can fit in the van.

It won't do anything because the Ignition switch is OFF hence no power can get back to the Starter Battery.
If you have a leisure battery then yes it might attempt to charge that but the chances are that unless its a High Power one it won't have any useful affect on the battery, remember that there will be a drain of about 50mA to 100mA to power the radio, Door locks and ECU from the battery, all of course in Standby, so unless your generating more than that amount of power you won't achieve any charging at all.
Most of these solar chargers are just a con I'm afraid

nickm wrote:Hi all

Has anyone used one of these in their Bongo ?

I have one, plugged it into the lighter socket and it powered up the radio.

I can turn the radio off, does this mean it will now trickle the battery ?

Anyway, great forum. Only picked up our Bongo on Saturday.

Its a 1998 2.5 v6 in white.

Had a great time parked up in Swanage today.

All the best

Nick & Family

Snap. Me and the missus took our new Bongo out on its first outing today also to swanage. We left Wimborne and drove via Bere Regis and monkey world road then over the top road overlooking the tank ranges to Corfe Castle and then on to swanage via Kingston. Friends of ours own the Putlake adventure farm just on the outskirts of the town so we stopped off there for a cup of tea and a piece of Dorset Apple cake before heading home, turned out quite a nice sunny afternoon weatherwise but still very chilly windwise.

g8dhe wrote: Most of these solar chargers are just a con I'm afraid

so long as you do the maths and have a proper charging circuit then it will prolong the leisure battery for an extra day or two. The little ones (i.e. less than £80) are pretty rubbish though. You've also got to think about how your devices draw power - i.e. plugging a mobile phone into charge through a 240V inverter will use up way more power than using a 12V charger.

I try to look out for devices that take 12V natively, so my freeview is 12V, wifi hotspot is also 12V and so on.

I thoroughly agree, but the likes of Maplin and the other £10-£40 jobs are simply money wasters, the trouble is they are giving the whole market for these a bad image, rather like 12 volt heaters for cup's of tea etc. A decent charger can be made and for a lot less than what is currently on the market, but until the volume of buyers increases for better quality ones there is no one prepared to put the investment in, not all the time they can use 3rd rate solar cells and no boost circuit to make the best use of lower light levels.

I have one with both a cig socket and croc clips, I use the croc clips on the battery and run the cable thru the top of the door on our spare car, kept it topped up lovely, am using it now while the bongo is having heart surgery,lol.

Hi all

Thanks for all your replies.

Will keep my fingers crossed that the battery will be ok, as it is left standing for a few days at a time. However when we are out it does have a good run.

Hello to Tony in Wimborne !

Regards

Nick & Family

well thats better for it than a 2 minute school run every day

Well i've got a 15w panel wired directly to my starter battery (via a regulator) and intend to add more soon(maybe another 30w panel). I fit mine to the roof rack and point the van south to maximise the charging when on site.

When not on holiday we leave the panel on the dashboard to keep the battery ticking over (seems to work fine)

Based on the conservative electricity consumption figures the panel makes the van last maybe half a day longer whilst off site... about 80w might just be enough to sustain us.

J