P_Dodd Posted December 11, 2020 Share Posted December 11, 2020 My 5 year old Auto-Trail Frontier Delaware (based on a Fiat Ducato) is fitted with a tracker & Alarm. The tracker reports the vehicle battery voltage and I monitor it daily on a phone app while it is in storage 15 miles away from my home. Since the beginning of November, when it started to get cold, I’ve noticed that the battery voltage is dropping off quite quickly. I’ve had to bring the Motorhome home from storage to charge the battery twice since then - about every 2 weeks. There is a large solar panel on the roof which is supposed to charge both the leisure batteries and the vehicle battery, but I’ve only noticed an increase in the voltage on one day recently that was very sunny. Does anyone else have to charge the vehicle battery so often and how low a voltage can I allow it to go and still have enough power to start the engine. The lowest I’ve allowed it to go so far is 11.7 volts. I charged it up last weekend and took it back to storage on Monday and the voltage has now gone down to 12.2 volts. I would be grateful for any advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ninian Posted December 11, 2020 Share Posted December 11, 2020 Hi, On my Dakota the battery reading I get on the EC480 control panel regularly sits around 12.2v which I reckon is about 60 - 70% charge and the van always starts with no problem. I have the 100w solar panel factory fitted but at this time of year doesn't do very much. I wouldn't let the battery much lower than that and then I would plug in and let the on-board charger take over just for a top up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
witzend Posted December 11, 2020 Share Posted December 11, 2020 I've solar charging my leisure battery's but enough doesn't get sent to engine battery during winter layup so for several years when parked up I fit a lead like this cured my problem with very little expense http://www.motts.org/BRIDGING%20FUSE.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keithl Posted December 11, 2020 Share Posted December 11, 2020 Philip, Is the split of the charge between leisure and starter batteries variable on your Dakota? I'm sure I've read on here about being able to change which battery gets priority charge from the solar. Worth looking in your owners handbook to check. Keith. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P_Dodd Posted December 11, 2020 Author Share Posted December 11, 2020 Thanks for the reply Ninian. The loss of battery power coincides with a change of storage location. The old storage place was taken over by Cinch Self Storage who wanted to clear out the vehicle storage, so they more than doubled the vehicle storage charge. That place was floodlit at night but the new place isn’t so I was wondering if the floodlights was contributing to the solar charging, as it used to last weeks before requiring a charge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P_Dodd Posted December 20, 2020 Author Share Posted December 20, 2020 Thanks Keith. The voltage dropped to 11.9 volts 13 days after the last charge so I’ve brought the Motorhome home from storage to charge it again. I’ve found the instructions in the manual for the solar charging. I had to access the Dealer/Advanced settings for the power unit. The Solar Charging was set to the Smart setting which means the system decides which battery gets charged, based on their voltages, but you can set it to Leisure or Vehicle so that only that battery gets charged from the solar panel. I’ve set it to Vehicle and will see how that goes when it goes back to storage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikefitz Posted December 20, 2020 Share Posted December 20, 2020 If the battery is 5 years old a new battery may help. Batteries lose capacity naturally with age and in cold conditions the effective capacity is reduced. The fact its dropping to a lowish value in a few days suggests its not in the best heath. Dropping to 11.7 is discharged to around 20% of capacity, starter batteries cannot handle this level of discharge without suffering significant capacity loss. Letting the battery fall to a low level can damage some of the van electronics, usually the air bag computer. If the battery is changed be sure to follow the directions in the vehicle handbook, in particular waiting the prescribed time with the doors and windows closed before disconnecting the battery negative. Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 It’s perhaps worth adding that, although ‘state-of-charge’ tables generally indicate that (for a conventional 12V wet-acid battery) a 12.2V voltage reading translates to an around 60% charge-state, this will only be true if there is no load on the battery. If the battery is powering an alam and a tracker, it’s to be anticipated that these will skew the voltage reading downwards to some degree - plus the starter-battery will be powering the usual Ducato functions that will be being maintained when the vehicle is parked up. And, as Mike has said, it’s to be expected that the starter-battery factory-fitted to a 2015 Ducato will have degraded naturally by now, however carefully it might have been maintained and treated. For Ducato ‘X250’ vehicles (built mid-2006 to mid-2014) there were plenty of complaints from motorhome owners about rapidly discharging starter-batteries, with it being said that charging the starter-battery was essential every 2 weeks to ensure that the motor would start reliably. My 2015 Ducato-based Rapido does not have a solar panel and I do nott run a tracker or an alarm when the motorhome is standing idle (which it does from November through March in normal non-COVID years) and I’ve not noticed any unusually fast starter-battery discharging. I do recharge the battery monthly using a CTEK charger, but my motorhome is kept at my home so that’s easy to do. I did replace my Rapido’s original starter-battery (and its original leisure-battery) earlier this year, but this was purely as a precautionary measure and the decision to do so was made pre-COVID-19. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rajohno Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 could you not just remove the engine battery when in storage (as long as you have any radio codes etc.) and keep the battery at home in the warm and dry? Then you just need to charge it once a month or keep it on an intelligent charger until it is needed again. The engine battery will have a constant drain such as ECU Memory clock memory alarms etc so will need topping up more than the leisure battery(s) which should have 0 drain and will hold their charge for a long time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keithl Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 rajohno - 2020-12-21 9:06 PM could you not just remove the engine battery when in storage... P_Dodd - 2020-12-11 7:49 PM My 5 year old Auto-Trail Frontier Delaware (based on a Fiat Ducato) is fitted with a tracker & Alarm... It is most likely an insurance requirement that the alarm and tracker remain active whilst in storage or cover will be refused. The OP would have to check his policy for confirmation. Keith. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P_Dodd Posted December 22, 2020 Author Share Posted December 22, 2020 rajohno - 2020-12-21 9:06 PM could you not just remove the engine battery when in storage (as long as you have any radio codes etc.) and keep the battery at home in the warm and dry? Then you just need to charge it once a month or keep it on an intelligent charger until it is needed again. The engine battery will have a constant drain such as ECU Memory clock memory alarms etc so will need topping up more than the leisure battery(s) which should have 0 drain and will hold their charge for a long time. As Keith said, it is a requirement of my insurance that the tracker is working. As I said previously, this problem has only occurred since I had to move storage location. At its previous location, it used to sit under a floodlight and lasted 6 weeks before I needed to charge it so I suspect the floodlight contributed to the solar charging, but at the new storage location, it’s in the dark at night. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
P_Dodd Posted May 12, 2021 Author Share Posted May 12, 2021 Now that the problem is solved I though I’d post an update with the solution. I had the vehicle battery replaced and that improved the situation, but only slightly. I then switched the Advanced/Dealer setting for the solar panel to Vehicle so that only the vehicle battery received a charge from the solar panel. That kept the vehicle battery charged nicely, but 6 weeks later, when I went to get the Motorhome from storage, the leisure batteries were totally flat. The control panel showed they only had 2.4 volts in them. I then changed the leisure batteries and returned the solar panel setting to Smart so that the power unit directs the solar charge to the lowest battery. That has fixed the problem completely. I monitor the vehicle battery voltage remotely via the tracker while it is in storage and I can see that it is receiving a charge from the solar panel now be as it’s voltage fluctuates up and down from about 12.5 volts to 13.4 volts. The leisure batteries are also maintaining a good voltage but the leisure battery capacity does drop off. I now believe that the old leisure batteries were so bad at maintaining their voltage that they were hogging all the solar charge so that the vehicle battery was not getting any. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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