Eberspacher Parasitic Drain On Leisure Battery.

[Skyliner33]

I have recently fitted an Eberspacher D2L and I am now having a parasitic drain on the leisure battery.
Yesterday evening I ran the heater for about 20 mins as a test.
Then switched it off.
This morning the battery monitor is telling me the battery is at 62%. It was at 99% before the test and around 79% after the 20 min test.

I have not made any alterations to the loom, I bought a T6kit. Its just plug and play (allegedly).

I've now run out of ideas how to solve this.

 

[Pete C]

Have you measured the current being drawn?
Once you have done this, you could go back to the manufacturer to see if the figure is normal.

Pete

 

[Skyliner33]

Have you measured the current being drawn?
Once you have done this, you could go back to the manufacturer to see if the figure is normal.

Pete

I did, but only when its all switched on. Thats part of the puzzle. It was only very time. I will charge the battery today and measure it again later.

 

[Dellmassive]

What @Pete C said.....

You need the meter out the mA (current) being drawn when running, and when on standby, and when disconnected to see where the power is going.

 

[Skyliner33]

What @Pete C said.....

You need the meter out the mA (current) being drawn when running, and when on standby, and when disconnected to see where the power is going.

Yes, can I measure the current by removing the fuses (and connecting the ammeter in place) or is that not a good idea? At the moment all I have connected to the leisure is the heater and its controller.

Edit: I have checked with the BM2 and there is no loss in battery % or volt drop with the heater not connected.

 

[Grim Reaper]

When running (especially on startup) the heater glow plug will take up to 10Amps so don't use the milliamps scale when testing that.
There will be a drain on your battery in standby as the heater control unit display is always on.
I put a couple of switches in my feeds, one to turn the heater off completely (a switch controls a relay to energise the 12V positive feed to the heater itself) and a switch in the positive feed from the heater to the display (no relay reqd as quite low current draw) so I can turn the display off while the heater is running to eliminate the light and try to extend the life of the led's in the display as they seem to die too soon for my liking (chinese 2kW heater with Gold controller)

 

[Markymark]

Sorry I have no suggestions but it doesn’t sound right. If it helps here is ours as a comparison.

We used our Eberspacher heater a lot recently in Scotland and with the heater running all night, fridge on cold enough to keep ice frozen in the ice box and LED lights on and charging phones we only use 6-8% of battery power in about 12 hours. We have 2 x 102 amp batteries. So around 15 amps over 12 hours.

Parked on the drive overnight with fridge off, no lights and the heater ‘off’ (still shows current temperature) we lose about 1% of battery. Our heater is older so we had to add a pressure (height) monitor to change the fuel mix at altitude and that runs in the background as does the B2B charger etc.

when we had the altitude sensor fitted it was supposed to be plug and play but of course it wasn’t and heater wouldn’t start up. Had to disconnect the room thermostat in the controller and only use the thermostat in the inlet pipe as there suddenly was a conflict that wasn’t there at all before. Very frustrating. I hope you discover and resolve the issue quickly.

 

[Skyliner33]

When running (especially on startup) the heater glow plug will take up to 10Amps so don't use the milliamps scale when testing that.
There will be a drain on your battery in standby as the heater control unit display is always on.
I put a couple of switches in my feeds, one to turn the heater off completely (a switch controls a relay to energise the 12V positive feed to the heater itself) and a switch in the positive feed from the heater to the display (no relay reqd as quite low current draw) so I can turn the display off while the heater is running to eliminate the light and try to extend the life of the led's in the display as they seem to die too soon for my liking (chinese 2kW heater with Gold controller)

Thanks. My heater control unit is not always on the display times out and shuts off after a minute or so.

Sorry I have no suggestions but it doesn’t sound right. If it helps here is ours as a comparison.

We used our Eberspacher heater a lot recently in Scotland and with the heater running all night, fridge on cold enough to keep ice frozen in the ice box and LED lights on and charging phones we only use 6-8% of battery power in about 12 hours. We have 2 x 102 amp batteries. So around 15 amps over 12 hours.

Parked on the drive overnight with fridge off, no lights and the heater ‘off’ (still shows current temperature) we lose about 1% of battery. Our heater is older so we had to add a pressure (height) monitor to change the fuel mix at altitude and that runs in the background as does the B2B charger etc.

when we had the altitude sensor fitted it was supposed to be plug and play but of course it wasn’t and heater wouldn’t start up. Had to disconnect the room thermostat in the controller and only use the thermostat in the inlet pipe as there suddenly was a conflict that wasn’t there at all before. Very frustrating. I hope you discover and resolve the issue quickly.

Thanks. I cant understand why mine is doing this. The loom came plug and play so its not like I can have messed up any electrical connections. All I had to do was connect the positive and negative to the leisure battery, and plug the loom into the controller, heater itself and fuel pump.

 

[Skyliner33]

OK A quick update:

Approx 4:45pm Sun.

Digital Multimeter set to 200m

Removed 5A fuse from Eberspacher controller. Replaced with DMM
At first connection meter read 27.8
After Approx 10 seconds dropped to 12.5
The after another 10 seconds dropped to 8.5

After display times out reading at 0.01

Ammeter in place of 20A heater fuse DMM reading 0.02 (heater is off.)

Display of BM2:

 

[bullracing]

Was it a brand new eber? I have never had problems like your describing. I do however have the eber on a switch when I am not using the van.
How old is the battery? Although I have 2x 110ah batteries I leave my eber on all night running and I very rarely see more then 2-3v drop with light usage too.

 

[Skyliner33]

Hi, yes the Eber is brand new. It’s the new D2L version also. My battery is a 120Ah battery from travel volts. About 6 months old. Very little usage until now.
I will try another test run later if I get time.
Cheers

 

[bullracing]

I notice if I watch a DVD with everything else going the voltage does drop a lot and on finishing it, it tends to return back to a more normal value however it will be lower, still up at between the 12.8v - 13v though.
You may have a problem somewhere there though. Yes the heater heats the glow plugs but really it is pretty efficient because the fan is small and the heat is produced by the diesel.
I have it written down as it uses 22w / 1.8ah from memory. This maybe rounded up but its what I used to spec my system.

Your battery may need to be fully cycled to be honest if your saying youve not really used it. If its been trickle charged at its float value it really needs a good hard high charge rate. Maybe, hopefully someone else can confirm.

 

[Skyliner33]

I notice if I watch a DVD with everything else going the voltage does drop a lot and on finishing it, it tends to return back to a more normal value however it will be lower, still up at between the 12.8v - 13v though.
You may have a problem somewhere there though. Yes the heater heats the glow plugs but really it is pretty efficient because the fan is small and the heat is produced by the diesel.
I have it written down as it uses 22w / 1.8ah from memory. This maybe rounded up but its what I used to spec my system.

Your battery may need to be fully cycled to be honest if your saying youve not really used it. If its been trickle charged at its float value it really needs a good hard high charge rate. Maybe, hopefully someone else can confirm.

Thanks. I hope to get time to run the heater again this evening and monitor the battery again.

 

[Skyliner33]

OK. Update.

Yesterday, Sun 13:32 after the battery had been on a charger and a short drive.





This morning, 06:40


Just before test of Eberspacher, 20:36. 30 min journey to and from work clearly shown.

Heater switched on at 20:39



Then at various times whilst the heater was running. Heater switched off at 21:16



Anyone any ideas to help please?

@Dellmassive @Grim Reaper @bullracing

This was yesterday. I cant seem to delete this image for some reason

 

[Skyliner33]

Pulled both Eberspacher fuses at 21:20. 19 min later, nothing else connected to leisure battery.

 

[Markymark]

It is as if the glow plug is permanently on but that can’t be right as you’ve pulled the fuses.

 

[Skyliner33]

It is as if the glow plug is permanently on but that can’t be right as you’ve pulled the fuses.

I cant understand it. A 120AH battery going from nearly full to less than 56% in about 1 hour. Thats about 55Ah. How can that current be drawn through a 20A and 5A fuse.

Im really puzzled and have no idea what to do next. The electrics was plug and play for the T6, so I made no alterations to that at all. One plug into the heater, one to the fuel pump and one to the controller and then connect to the leisure battery.

 

[Markymark]

Good luck finding an answer. I know it would be doing my head in. We spent three years trying to find out why our Renault Espace’s battery went flat overnight and always when we went skiing. It turns out a relay in the tow bar wiring (the fridge circuit one) used to short out below freezing and drain the car battery in a few hours.

 

[Pete C]

How confident are you that the device you are using to measure battery “performance” is accurate ?
I always treat them with a healthy dose of scepticism.

I know we shouldn’t equate voltage with available capacity, but in those pictures the voltage and % don’t correlate.

Pete

 

[mmi]

The percentage reading of BM2 is meant to give rough estimate of SOC of a battery being at rest for hours.
I would suggest let the battery be undisturbed over night and see the voltage reading then. Voltage of lead acid batteries sag even under small loads but bounces back at rest (up to 12 hours after disconnecting the load).