battery question

olpoll

Guest
this maybe a daft one but......

if i was wild camping and a hard frost killed the engine battery could i use the leisure battery with jump leads to start the engine

thanks Andrew
 
olpoll said:
this maybe a daft one but......

if i was wild camping and a hard frost killed the engine battery could i use the leisure battery with jump leads to start the engine

thanks Andrew
Click to expand...

Hi Olpoll.
No No NO The van battery is designed to give a lot of power in a short burst. The leisure battery designed to give a small amount of power over a long period of time. Should you use leisure battery to start van you may risk melting the lead plates within the leisure battery causing irrepairable damage. Only thing is that some folk use ordinary car batteries as a leisure battery in that case it would be ok. So the moral of the story is look carefully at your leisure battery and decide what kind it is and use appropriately.
Happy Krimbo.
Regards,
Wanderer
 
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The Grand Wanderer said:
Hi Olpoll.
No No NO The van battery is designed to give a lot of power in a short burst. The leisure battery designed to give a small amount of power over a long period of time. Should you use leisure battery to start van you may risk melting the lead plates within the leisure battery causing irrepairable damage. Only thing is that some folk use ordinary car batteries as a leisure battery in that case it would be ok. So the moral of the story is look carefully at your leisure battery and decide what kind it is and use appropriately.
Happy Krimbo.
Regards,
Wanderer
Click to expand...

thanks very much wanderer, i thought this might be the case but you have answered my question,
i carry a generator and a battery starter so i could get going this way by charging the engine battery with the generator im also going to invest in a good power pac battery starter (that will save pulling the smelly old generator out if i have a problem)
the reason i asked is my van hasn't been started for a while and i tried it this morning (hard frost last night -5) and the battery just didn't have enough to turn it over

thanks again and all the best Andrew
 
Just use a pair of jump leads to connect them together, then wait for about five or ten minutes. Disconnect the + connection on the leisure battery first, you don't want your split charge unit to go up in smoke.

Disconnect the jump leads and you will find the engine battery has more than enough charge to start.

The engine battery should have some charge i.e. not be absolutely flat or defective (internal shorts etc) or excessive current might flow. Even then I doubt the leisure battery would be harmed.

Hallii
 
If you have an Elecsol battery they say you can use it as an engine battery as well. Another solution if you were really stuck & desperate is to make up a lead to give your engine battery a trickle charge from your leisure battery (assuming your leisure battery is fully charged) but you would have to disconnect it before trying to start your engine unless it will melt the wire.
The easiest as you say is to have a decent power pack engine starter. I have one I bought about 20 years ago I think it was called Power Pac, don't know if there would be enough in it to start the engine but use it for powering my 12 volt drill through a cable I made up. Been through a couple of the cheap ones (I should know better) in that time.
 
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Kontiki said:
If you have an Elecsol battery they say you can use it as an engine battery as well. Another solution if you were really stuck & desperate is to make up a lead to give your engine battery a trickle charge from your leisure battery (assuming your leisure battery is fully charged) but you would have to disconnect it before trying to start your engine unless it will melt the wire.
The easiest as you say is to have a decent power pack engine starter. I have one I bought about 20 years ago I think it was called Power Pac, don't know if there would be enough in it to start the engine but use it for powering my 12 volt drill through a cable I made up. Been through a couple of the cheap ones (I should know better) in that time.
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im going wild camping on boxing day so im off to halfords to see what they have in the way of power pacs............just in case!

thanks again :)
 
olpoll said:
im going wild camping on boxing day so im off to halfords to see what they have in the way of power pacs............just in case!

thanks again :)
Click to expand...

I bought a good heavy duty pack with Invertor/Compressor/ Light etc from Towsure. Never go anywher without it. Cost about £90, seems expensive, but alot of these power packs dont have the umph to turn a bigger engine over.:D
 
It is quite common for RVs to have an emergency interconnect switch so the leisure battery can be used to start the engine.

True, proper deep cycle batteries are not really designed to deliver high currents for long periods of time, but the operative word is "long". Drawing starting current for the second taken to start the battery, especially if the two batteries are connected for a minute before starting to allow some recharge of the engine battery, is not going to hurt anything and may get you out of trouble. A check would be to connect the two batteries for a a while and then give the headlights a quick flash. If they are still very very dim, then it is unlikely the leisure battery is going to be much help anyway and the jumper lead should be removed immediately.

Main thing is to just try one or two quick restarts with say 15 seconds between and if that is not successful, get an external jump start. The engine battery may have frozen or have shorted cells and in this case, the only way to solve the immediate problem would be a new battery.
 
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