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Leasure battery charge
- Thread starter tutuxico
- Start date
Halsall-
Active Member
You can, but it is difficult to get to the second the second battery terminal under the passenger seat. It’s easier to plug in the charging cable on the socket on the side of the van and use the trickle charger in the van. The manual says do this once per month to keep the battery at max performance …
Webbah
Top Poster
Just get an adapter cable that has CEE Commando Blue 16A for the van side and a T13 Swiss plug on the other. Then just plug in your van wherever you can. I can share a link if you need one but even the Mercedes Service Center in Vaud can likely get you one. Mine came with the van at purchase so I'm surprised you don't have one!
Halsall-
Active Member
No its a Marco Polo camper 2019, I thought you where trying to connect a battery charger Directly to the leisure battery. We use the external cable on the outside port and use the internal battery charger in the MP. We also have a Jackery 1000 battery pack and solar panels, which allow use to run the van for up to 8 days in winter with low watts electric heaters
Halsall-
Active Member
Our leisure battery performance dropped off, we could only manage 3-4 hours with the fridge running, so I connected a battery reconditioned / charger which I have on my McLaren and it brought the battery back to life. We now get 3 days of life running the fridge if we need it
Samebutdifferent
Top Poster
When you say the power pack allows you to run the van do you connect the power pack to the leisure battery so the fridge, diesel heater etc all run as normal using the leisure battery as a 'pass through'?
Samebutdifferent
Top Poster
You can plug a charger into the 12v socket in the van. Many chargers have the accessory plug required like this one from Ctek
tutuxico
Member
That's right.
tutuxico
Member
Halsall-
Active Member
Yes I had a short cable made with the external port adaptor (plug to the external socket) and uk household socket on the other end and this provides the pass through as if you plugged into the mains. The power pack is either in the pop up tent or on the rear shelf in the boot of the vehicle with the cable running through the tailgate. We have stopped using the diesel heater as it triggered our carbon monoxide monitor and we could smell diesel fumes when sleeping up stairs. We took the vehicle back to Mercedes and they tested it and said nothing was wrong and the smell is typical for this type of heater. So we have switched to a 600/1000w electric heater that sits between the two front seats.
Halsall-
Active Member
I can see somebody as mentioned the charger above, we have the same one, but the cigarette lighter sockets only charge the main vehicle battery and that is why I had to connect across the leisure battery terminals. I am an electronic engineer. The charger is good to recondition the battery if you have lost life, it peps it up, but will not bring full back to life. But I would say after metering the leisure battery, the build in Mercedes’ battery charger is very good and once it charges the leisure battery, the electronic circuit switches over to the main vehicle battery. But the circuit does not switch the other way, I have tried lots to under stand how it all worked.
Halsall-
Active Member
Just done a quick demo for you, the picture shows how we charge the leIsure battery once per month. We use the vehicle every day, so it does get some charge, but it is very high, so not good for the battery life. The video shows the separate charger plugged into the cigarette light socket and you can see that the meter read out is not seeing the charge, i did put a meter across the battery terminals as well to check. I have tried all 3 cigarette sockets in the vehicle and non worked. That is when I looked at the circuit diagram as Mercedes’ could not help…Bugger It will not let me upload the video, just the photo
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Samebutdifferent
Top Poster
Obviously the 12v sockets in the camping side of the van have to be always live, only the cabin 12v sockets are ignition dependent.
I'm not sure that @tutuxico van has an external hookup.
Why not attach a permanent pigtail to the leisure battery so that you can easily plug in a 240v charger every so often. Sure, the first time you access the leisure battery to attach the pigtail will be painful but from there on in each subsequent time would be simple?
I do this with two motorcycles that are connected to Optimate chargers throughout winter
I do this with two motorcycles that are connected to Optimate chargers throughout winter
Halsall-
Active Member
Good question, we never used the 12v sockets, I just checked which 12v sockets are live and out of the 3, only one is live without the ignition on and that is the one next to the rear seats ie. Near the cup holder. The few of the USB sockets are live, but not all of them. But I said, if you are going to connect separate battery charger you might as well connect the standard external cable and just use the internal charger in the van, which is a good spec..
Yes, mine is plugged into the external socket on my driveway. However, there was mention in the above thread though about battery charger / conditioners e.g. Ctek, Optimate etc in which case you would need to connect direct to the battery or live 12v socket if it is connected to the leisure battery
Halsall-
Active Member
Which socket did you use ?
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