Can anyone tell me what this battery is for? It's a 2018 panel van, doesn't have auxiliary heater or towbar and it just seems like its connected to a relay not a smart charger (which I thought it had to be for smart alternators). Can I reposition this to under the drivers seat and extend the main cable so I have more of a standard leisure battery set up?
Factory fitted 2nd battery
- Thread starter Rob.P
- Start date
Strange? Sure its factory fitted?
A factory Aux battery is connected with a relay. Maybe whoever spec'd your van added the second battery option.
So I was searching for auxiliary battery but should have been searching for second maintenance free battery with cut off relay as that what is specced on the paperwork (I bought the van at 18 months old) so that was an option the original owner went for. Is it essentially a leisure battery and does anyone know what it feeds? I thought a different type of charger was required for leisure battery on these vans.
Yep, it's essentially a leisure battery but it won't feed anything yet until you hook something up I don't think. A DC-DC charger is the ideal solution (and will give greater than the 80% charge that the factory relay will), but you can happily live with the factory solution if your usage needs are reasonably light.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that, ours does feed one of the dash sockets.
Use my factory fit as a leisure battery using factory charging with no issuse. Run 12v appliances including fridge. Got it connected to solar when off grid.
Is yours under the twin passenger seat? I was thinking of repositioning it to the drivers seat.
Yeah, we ran ours for a year or so with the factory relay setup too.
Why?
I'm planning on fitting a twin swivel.
Same...factory fitted 2nd battery....3.5 years now.... .runs fridge and lights when camping. No problems with charging with either engine or solar.
Does anyone have experience on changing the double bench to a passenger captain seat and dealing with all the electrics under the bench?
I’ve got a factory leisure battery which was fitted under the passenger captains seat. When I had my ICE install it was moved from passenger to drivers side to make room for a sub with no problem at all by Absolu5e. So it can be done, the cables are either long enough or can be extended.
I moved my factory fit second battery from under the double bench to under the driver’s seat without any problems and without needing to extend any cabling.
Once you remove the double bench you unplug all the relays and remove them from the plastic housing and they then tuck neatly into the grooves in the van floor under the rubber matting.
There’s plenty of vids/info on Google.
I’ve not put a single passenger seat in so can’t help with that bit.
That's good to hear, have you got any photos?
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