# Bessacarr E465 leisure battery not charging



## holeshole (Mar 20, 2010)

I have a problem with our 2005 Fiat Ducato based Bessacarr 465 in that the engine is not charging the leisure battery. The split charge relay is working and the fuses are OK. There appears to be a poor connection between the split charge relay and the leisure battery.

I have attached a copy of the wiring diagram taken from the van handbook. The split charge and frig/omnistep relays are in the top LH corner. When the engine is running there is 14.5V (indicated by a cheap multimeter) present on the 20A fuses and on the brown/blue wire leaving the fuse. This runs through a connector near the battery, which is OK, and then down the back of the engine compartment and along the underside of the van. At some point it must tee off to the leisure battery and the distribution panel that is mounted over the habitation door. The 14.5V is not reaching the leisure battery nor the distribution panel. There is only one brown/blue wire connecting to each of the battery and panel so these terminals are not being used as the tee point.

When the engine is not running I am getting about 11.5V from the leisure battery (pretty well discharged), this appears at the distribution panel but not at the split charge relay where I am only getting about 4.5V. This all leads me to think that the tee joint, shown as a black dot in the wiring diagram, must be causing a high resistance connection.

My question is - does anyone know where this tee joint is? It is not immediately obvious beneath the van, and it is difficult to see in the space beneath the wardrobe and under the Ultraheat etc where the wires enter the inside of the van. The outside wires are wrapped in black tape and are clipped tightly under to the underside of the floor. I don't want to attack the outside wires if the joint is inside the van.

If anyone can point to a different possible cause I would be pleased to hear. Any suggestions welcome!


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## RhinoInstalls (May 11, 2010)

I would check all connections under the bonnet, Near the engine battery there is a block connection (running down the bottom of the battery) which sometimes gets corroded. 9 times out of 10 the fault is normally under the bonnet.

Phil


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## holeshole (Mar 20, 2010)

Many thanks Phil for your advice. The two connector block joints by the engine battery appear to be sound so I thought I'd start trying to find the tee joint, looking inside the van first.

I removed the Trumavent off the back of the Trumatic heater and was quite hopeful when I saw a bunch of connectors that had been hidden under the fan unit. When we got the van about 12 months ago the water pump was leaking and the floor in this area got soaked a couple of times, this may have caused some corrosion of the connectors.

The photos show what I found, unfortunately when I exposed the tee joint this was sound and so is not problem.

Looks like I'm going to have to get down and dirty under the van!


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## holeshole (Mar 20, 2010)

Have now reinsulated the tee joint with heat shrink insulation, clipped all the wiring back in place and refitted the Trumavent fan to the back of the heater. Incidently, I see the user manual for the Trumavent recommends that it is removed and the fan cleaned every year! I can’t see that happening myself, and although there was some build up of muck on the fan blades it wasn’t excessive but we have had the van only 12 months - perhaps the previous owners were very conscientious!

Since getting under the van is a major hassle I thought I’d stop and re-consider. According to my reading of the circuit diagram (see original post) there should be leisure battery voltage present at all times at on terminal 87 of the split charge relay. This is the front relay shown in the first picture below. The brown/blue wire connected to this terminal runs along the front of the engine and emerges from its black covering near to the battery, see picture 2. A close-up of the wiring at this point is shown in picture 3 where the brown/blue and brown /green wires share a double connector and the red/yellow wire is the feed to the frig and Omnistep from the relay behind the split charge relay.

If I separate the double connector I find that I have 5V on the brown/blue wire running to the back of the van that I think should be 12V, ie leisure battery voltage. There is 12V on the other wire, the brown/green wire running to terminal 30 of the relay, ie engine battery voltage. Could anybody with a similar setup confirm from their own van that they have 12V on the brown/blue connector running to the back of the van?

I am clutching at straws and wondering if there is anything not shown in the circuit diagram connected to this wire under the van that may be faulty and pulling the voltage down to 5V, but I don’t really see how.

Getting desparate,

Alan!


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## RhinoInstalls (May 11, 2010)

Hi Alan

Which side of the connector under the engine battery did you test ?

Make sure you test where the wire go's in, or even better strip a bit of wire further down to check the voltage. (blue/brown)

You should have voltage on both blue/brown (leisure battery) & green/brown (engine battery). and voltage on the red/yellow (fridge) when the engine is running.

Phil


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## holeshole (Mar 20, 2010)

Thanks again Phil - it's so nice to know I'm not alone!

The voltages quoted above were obtained with the engine not running, and the 5V was obtained from the brown/blue wire running back under the van. The other side of the connection running to the relay was 0V. I had stripped some insulation on the brown/blue wire to the van a few inches away from the connector in the hope that it was a broken wire at the connector but still only found 5V.

With the engine running I get 14.5V on all three wires (brown/blue, brown/green and red/yellow) wires coming from the direction of the relay/fuse bank; on the wires running to the back of the van I get 0V on the brown/green and red/yellow wires, and 5V on the brown/blue wire. When I connect the connector I see only 12.5V at the leisure battery, ie no charge - this is the problem.

Alan


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## RhinoInstalls (May 11, 2010)

Hi Alan

All i can suggest is you keep testing the brown and blue wire. In different locations. with having 5volts sounds like its a bad connection or a false reading from your meter. If its a true 5volts its a bad connection not a break, so test all block connectors at both ends of the plug (strip wire). Unfortunately theres no easy way to find the fault, apart from running a new wire from the leisure battery to the fuse under the bonnet.


Phil


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## quiraing (Feb 12, 2007)

Did you run your battery down to below six volts - if so there is a protection fuse to stop the split charger being overloaded when the engine is started. The answer is to charge the battery by plugging into the mains for a few hours until the battery shows over 12 volts then open the bonnet and locate a block of fuses hidden under a cowling in the top middle of the engine compartment ( the cowling comes off when the two nuts are removed) Take off the plastic cover revealing a four fuse block. there are normally only 3 fuses ( the top position being empty) the fuse you want to check is the second from the bottom - it's a 20 amp fuse. -- Best of luck


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## quiraing (Feb 12, 2007)

Did you run your battery down to below six volts - if so there is a protection fuse to stop the split charger being overloaded when the engine is started. The answer is to charge the battery by plugging into the mains for a few hours until the battery shows over 12 volts then open the bonnet and locate a block of fuses hidden under a cowling in the top middle of the engine compartment ( the cowling comes off when the two nuts are removed) Take off the plastic cover revealing a four fuse block. there are normally only 3 fuses ( the top position being empty) the fuse you want to check is the second from the bottom - it's a 20 amp fuse. -- Best of luck


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## holeshole (Mar 20, 2010)

Thanks quiraing for your interest. The relays and fuses you refer to are shown in the photos in my last post. They are all OK. Leisure battery voltage bottomed out at 11.5V before I recharged it via MHU to 12.5V.

Alan


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## holeshole (Mar 20, 2010)

Thanks Phil, I was afraid that that's what the conclusion would be. It'll have to wait until Thursday before I can get under the van. I'm not looking forward to it!

Alan


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## holeshole (Mar 20, 2010)

Just had a chat with a colleague in the office where I work and he suggested checking out the earthing of the leisure battery. This sounds a much more plausible source of trouble than an undisturbed cable. It still means getting down and dirty and investigations will have to wait until next week as I forgot we are away this weekend (my weekend starts Thursday!) to visit the mother-in-law. Would have been in the van, despite the engine not charging the leisure battery, but changed circumstances now mean we will be going in the car. We will miss the night we were going to spend in Burton Dassett Country Park overlooking the M40!

Alan


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## Sargent (Feb 1, 2008)

Hi Alan I am sorry for the delay in getting to this query, I had missed it when I checked yesterday.

You are correct that there is a splice which links the leisure battery and the split charging (that is the "T piece" you have found, but there may well be another connector which is in line but we would need the model and year of manufacture to allow us to access the drawings to enable you to locate this?

If you want to either send me a PM or email ([email protected]) or you could give our support people a call 01482 678981 then we should be able to help.

Best regards

Ian Sargent


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## holeshole (Mar 20, 2010)

Thanks Ian for your help. When I can get under the van I will check out the earthing of the leisure battery. If this is not the trouble I will PM you as obviously any in-line connector is potential problem. Van details and circuit diagram are in the OP, I see the circuit diagram is very similar to the one on your web site.

Alan


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## holeshole (Mar 20, 2010)

Couldn't resist have a quick test this morning before setting off northwards this afternoon.

Leisure battery earth connection is not the problem! Measured 0 ohms between leisure battery negative terminal and outside edge of cigarette lighter in the cab. For good measure also measured between engine battery negative terminal and body metalwork - also 0 ohms.

I will PM Ian Sargent, will post results when I have anything to report.

Alan


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## holeshole (Mar 20, 2010)

Have yet to PM Ian of Sargent’s but yesterday afternoon I was able to get under the van. Couldn’t see anything obvious, but took a few pics anyway and came in for the night. When I looked at the pics on the PC I noticed a bright green spot on the cable that the flash had highlighted, see pic 1. 

This morning I had a closer look and saw that the loom had rubbed against a small pipe (brake pipe I think) and the bright green was the copper showing through. Because the damage was not very accessible I decided to pull back this end of the loom from the engine compartment and bring it out to the side of the van. To do this I had to remove the cab radio to disconnect the small brown/yellow wire that also runs in the loom. Instead of using a connector some kind soul had actually hard wired the brown/yellow wire to the short wire emerging from the back of the radio with a compression link so I had to force that apart first. I then soldered a long piece of thicker wire to the brown/yellow wire and managed to feed a length of plastic sleeving over the brown/yellow wire down behind the radio aperture and out through the hole in the engine compartment bulkhead. This allowed me to pull the brown/yellow wire out into the engine compartment to give sufficient slack to pull the loom back, and hopefully I will be able to pull the brown/yellow wire back into the cab through the sleeving without having to root around behind the dashboard.

Once I had the loom out to the side of the van I was able to see the damage more clearly as shown in pics 2 & 3. Separating the wires revealed that the damage was not to the brown/blue wire as I had expected but to the brown/yellow wire that supplies the radio! See pic 4. The circuit diagram shows that the supply to the radio through is via a fuse that also supplies the frig ignition, which had now ceased to work. Although the circuit diagram shows the fuse adjacent to the block of 6 in the wardrobe I eventually found it behind the control panel over the habitation door! I replaced the fuse and the frig ignition is now working again. I assume that my moving the loom had caused the wire to make a better contact with the pipe and had shorted the battery to earth. Will now have to re-insulate wires and start afresh.

I was able to bring the end of the loom inside the van and measure the resistance between the end of the brown/blue wire and the leisure battery +ve. This was about 500 ohms – the same resistance as I got between the splice under the Trumavent (see earlier posts) and the end of the brown/blue cable when it was still in the engine compartment. So I have still to find the problem! I can hardly believe that I managed to find a faulty cable only for it to turn out to be the wrong cable!


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## holeshole (Mar 20, 2010)

Pic 1 of previous post. Seems to have got lost in the posting.


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## holeshole (Mar 20, 2010)

*Bessacarr E465 leisure battery not charging - Eureka!*

I have found it! Many thanks to Ian Sargent who explained that there was a further splice under the van rearwards of the leisure battery compartment. This is shown before being disturbed in pic 1.

Exposing the splice revealed the corroded connection shown in pic 2 and, when cut out of the loom, pic 3. The wire giving the high resistance has finally become detached from the corroded splice.

Re-making the splice entailed soldering the three wires together with a heavy old-fashioned soldering iron heated on a blowlamp as I did not have a crimp connector and tool large enough to take all the wires. My dainty electric iron couldn't cope with the size of the wires and the cold wind blowing!

So that's it - problem solved. Many thanks to all who responded with advice and information. I hope it will be a long time before I have to venture under the van again!


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## Sargent (Feb 1, 2008)

Hi Alan great news I am pleased you are up and running. Now you can enjoy some well deserved R&R

Best regards

Ian


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