Motorhome won't start

[Carolyn and Kev]

It's just a 20 quid Bluetooth gadget I've got on the battery that measures voltage only. Not measured it with a multimeter, I put it on just to monitor voltage while the car is idle and I'm listening to the radio.

It's at least 12.2v usually and it's accurate enough at that task. It's when the enormous starting current is being drawn it seems to drop, it says itself it's too low but same as I say it whips the engine over so I don't really care ?

What ever floats your boat guys...A £20 bluetooth gismo is the the thing to have then?

Keep your AA or RAC cover up just incase it packs up!! You never know?

 

[Bill and Tracey]

Has nobody mentioned the difference between leisure and starter batteries yet? Has the poster ( postee?) sorted his van yet?

 

[Richard n Ann]

£20 bluetooth gismo is the the thing to have then?

Not really, it's just a shite Chinese thing I have on our car.

The thing to have is a NASA BM1 battery monitor ??

 

[ChrisL]

Not necessarily our cranking voltage has always been low on the car, sometimes it was 7.9v ? it always whipped the engine over so I ignored it... Anyway had a new battery this week because it started to lose charge (with no drain), and guess what? The cranking voltage is too low again ?

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I have one of these cheap bluetooth battery monitors and it is pretty accurate, the thing to remember with the voltage drop warning is that the battery already has a load on it from the heater plugs so it's not surprising that when the starter motor turns over that the voltage drops even further. I get a similar voltage drop on a battery less then a year old.

 

[Jaws]

Ok but in the fiat manual it says in thick black letters don't jump start this vechile any way you can't get cables on the + side of battery

But by using the leisure battery that is precisely what you are doing.. Jump starting it off the leisure battery !

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[210ians]

The thing nobody is speaking to me about is the alarm and only when I add the lesure battery duse the van start with no problem and the alarm lights cancel and van starts fine ? As has been said it is intermittent and I now take earth wire off when leave van in storage and this so far hasn't hapend

 

[2bob]

the earth strap could be the problem as the lesure battery is just giving it a bit more enough to fire up