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elddis motorhome owners


louisekay

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Hi is there any elddis autoquest owners out there . Would still like some infomation on charging leisure battery . Hand book says battery charger will operate automatically when the motorhome is connected to the mai ns outlet. Would this mean that i can just leave jt plugged in over the winter with no harm to battery.how long should it take to fully charge anyway. Been told charger should automatically shut off when charged. Battery is a platinum plus.

reason for trying to get an answer don't wont to keep disconneting and connecting to a portable charger if not necessary.

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Hi, avantgarde 145 08 plate. My van has been off road and covered for last three months. it is plugged into mains but on a timer for 1 hour a day. I have started it & run it up to temperature three times during this period & had no trouble with either battery both showing full charge on the onboard gauge. Hope this helps. "A"
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Hi do you mean mains switch on control panel ( water pump water gauge etc) or mains switch under side seat. I was referring to first one, does it need to be on to charge lesiure battery, or will it charge automatically when hooked up.
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mids

 

I believe you own an Elddis Autoquest 115 bought (new) in late-2014.

 

The 2014 Autoquest handbook advises that, for your motorhome’s battery-charger to operate, the vehicle (necessarily) must to be connected to a live mains 230V power-supply and all the switches on the Mains Unit (Handbook Section 8.1 “230v POWER SUPPLY”) need to be in the ON position.

 

The Autoquest’s control-panel is described in Section 9.3 of the Handbook. The panel is made by BCA and carries a gauge and 5 switches marked Master, Lights, Water, Pump and Awning and I assume you are referring to the switch marked “Master”.

 

The Handbook describes the function of the Master switch as follows:

 

“In order for any of the electrics in your motorhome to operate from the auxiliary battery you must first ensure that the master switch is in the ‘I’ position.”

 

The Master switch evidently does not influence whether or not the motorhome’s battery-charger will operate.

 

(A motorhome control-panel’s ‘main switch’ generally does not need to be switched ON for the battery-charger to operate. But there are exceptions to that rule-of-thumb and the motorhome’s handbook SHOULD cover that eventuality. It is also commonplace for the battery-charger itself to have an ON/OFF switch, but I can’t find anything obvious in the Autoquest Handbook about this.)

 

There are many on-line inquiries about how leisure-vehicle battery-charging functions (or should function) but a lot of these questions could easily be resolved if the motorhome owner made some simple checks.

 

In this instance, if the Autoquest were connected to a live mains 230V power-supply and all the switches on the Mains Unit were in their ON position, the battery-charger should begin to charge the motorhome’s leisure-battery. If the voltage of the leisure-battery is checked at the battery’s terminals (digital voltmeters are readily available and not expensive) before the motorhome is connected to the 230V supply and checked again once the connection has taken place, a significant rise in the voltage reading should be evident. This would prove that the battery-charger was operating.

 

If there’s any doubt about whether a switch on a motorhome’s control-panel affects the operation of the battery-charger, experiment with the switch. Follow the procedure in the last paragraph with the control-panel’s switches OFF and confirm that the battery-charger is operating. If it is, then the switches do not need to be ON. If the battery-charger is not operating, try turning the switches ON and see what happens.

 

A common motorhome battery-charging inquiry relates to whether or not the vehicle’s starter-battery is (or can be) charged by the motorhome’s on-board battery-charger. If the starter-battery’s voltage is checked before the battery-charger begins to operate and checked again afterwards, if the starter-battery is being charged the voltage reading should have risen.

 

A starter-battery may be charged automatically when a motorhome’s on-board battery-charger operates, or a switch’s setting may need to be changed to cause starter-battery charging to occur. The Handbook SHOULD cover this, but if a switch is found that looks like it might have something to do with battery-charging, experiment with the switch’s settings. If a motorhome’s on-board battery-charger cannot be employed to charge the starter-battery, an alternative method will be needed to maintain the starter-battery’s charge-state (regularly driving the motorhome, using a separate battery-charger, fitting a device to pass charge from the leisure-battery to the starter-battery, etc.)

 

It may be possible to establish what the on-board battery-charger is doing from readouts on the control-panel. When I connect my Rapido motorhome to a 230V supply it’s plain from the control-panel readouts when the leisure-battery and the starter-battery are both being charged. (It’s also plain from the readouts when the battery-charger is not operating despite the motorhome being connected to a 230V supply.) My Rapido’s control-panel is not sufficiently sophisticated to tell me what voltage (or amperage) is being supplied by the on-board battery-charger to the motorhome’s batteries; a voltage check at the battery terminals is necessary to establish that.

 

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