Jul. 14, 2005 - electrickery

Those of you that have been following my charging challenges will be aware that I replaced the diode, which was obviously faulty...

I was still however, concerned that I wasn't seeing enough charging voltage at the batteries.... this had stumped me, as everything had tested out OK... yet still only seeing high 13's at the batteries.... commensurate with a fully charged battery....

This afternoon, I had another eureka moment.... one of my thoughts was that as the sensing is off the engine start battery, which never gets worked very hard, so never really needs much of a charge. As a consequence, I was thinking about putting in a new sensing wire to the services battery... but was a little concerned about over charging the engine battery as a consequence.... however, I was just looking at the wiring diagram again, and realised that I can remove the isolator key for the engine battery without removing the battery load from the alternator, and then switch the circuit across to the services battery.... voila... all 3 batteries will still get charged via the splitter, but the sensing will now come from the services battery... no re-wiring, no mucking about, and no risk.... and when the services battery is looking healthier, then I can just switch back to engine battery sensing, and no chance of an overcharge...

Got to be worth a try......

Jul. 14, 2005 - electrickery