Something seems wrong with the batteries

[steve_b]

in theory if you measure the voltage on the front battery it should be identical because they are wired in parallel, so you are basically measuring both every time you measure either (unless the cube fuse has blown which we have ruled out)

The display gets its voltage/current measure from the famous "shunt" I believe, behind the fridge - I don't have an experience of it but that could be a possible point of failure (or the bodywork that it is connected to)

 

[WelshGas]

No. it never shows any drain in amps. It's always at 0.0. I believe it used to show 0.2 quite often. I believe the control panel screen itself uses 0.2A.

How long has that been going on? Before the new batteries were fitted?

 

[ThomasHJ]

I wish I could say @WelshGas. As everything always worked just fine and we never went witout EHU for long, we just never really paid attention to the amperage draw on the central control unit.

 

[WelshGas]

I wish I could say @WelshGas. As everything always worked just fine and we never went witout EHU for long, we just never really paid attention to the amperage draw on the central control unit.

I think you might need to go back to your Dealership that fitted the batteries. Although they are fairly new, they come with a warranty for a reason. One could have failed, and just checking the voltage may not give the full picture as a battery can fail under load . It might need to be stress tested. Also the Control Panel should be showing a current draw so something is wrong there.

 

[ThomasHJ]

yeah, I think perhaps thats the way to go. Would have been nice to be able to fix it without going in, but might be smart by now. Will take a while, but when I get it back I will give some feedback on what the problem was. thanks to everyone for helping out.

 

[jonomate]

Would really appreciate some help with the following.

Our Cali is T5 2011 SE. During our recent holidays we camped without being on EHU for the first time. I noticed the batteries voltage (as shown on the central control panel) dropped quite quickly. I know the % is inaccurate and sometimes even goes back up again. But they didn’t even last 48 hours. It was hot outside, but we used nothing that draws from the batteries, other than the fridge. This surprised me as I have read here on the forums that fellow Cali owners can easily do 3 days without EHU and sometimes even 4 or 5 days. So something seems to be wrong.

Another sign that something is wrong is that the amperes that are being drawn from the batteries (as shown on the central control panel) are always at 0.0 even with the fridge and lights on. I just hadn’t noticed this before.

It’s strange, because when we bought our Cali second hand (less than a year ago) we had the VW Camper Centrum do a full check of everything. They replaced all 3 batteries (the car battery and both leisure batteries), so the batteries are all brand new.

To gather some information that might help in diagnosing the issue, I did a 'test' the last 2 days. I parked the Cali, turned on the fridge at ‘max’ (even added a normal amount of food) and checked the voltage-reading on the central control panel every few hours or so when I had the chance and wrote down the voltage reading. I kept all other things that could draw from the leisure batteries turned off (heater, lights, etc).



These are the readings:

	Time​	Voltage​	%​
Wednesday	14:42​	12.9​	100​
	14:45​	12.5​	70​
	14:47​	12.5​	70​
	19:53​	12.5​	70​
Thursday	8:18​	12.3​	50​
	10:59​	12.2​	40​
	15:07​	12.1​	30​
	18:11​	12​	20​

So, within 24 hours the reading says 12.1V / 30% and after another 3 hours, so a total of 27 hours the batteries were at 12V / 20%.

At this point I figured the readings show there’s something wrong so I stopped the test. I did try one more thing and that is that I fired up the auxillary heater and the amperage draw stayed at 0.0. Which seems wrong as well.

I’m not very experienced with electrics, but spend a few nights reading through the forums. I read in this thread that there’s a possibility that the 50/75A fuse of the rear battery is blown and were just using 1 leisure battery now. It’s dark out now and I put the Cali on EHU to charge the batteries back up again. Will try to test the fuse tomorrow. Will read up on how to do that tonight, because I have only used a multimeter once before in my life.

I hope it’s something simple like that fuse, so that it can be fixed by myself. If not, I will have to bring the van in to the VW Camper centrum. But prefer to try DIY wherever possible. Also because I like to learn. I do fear that if we are on 1 battery only, this might have been the case since we bought the van. Which means one of the brand new batteries hasn’t been charged since then. Which, well, isn’t good

Any help is very much appreciated.

Hi, I had an problem with our leisure battery, it wouldn’t charge ! I’m not sure if it’s exactly the same problem as you’re having or not. When I started the engine the fridge came back on and all was good, but as soon as I parked up, and plugged in it lasted a couple of days and there wasn’t enough power to even run the fridge ! VW couldn’t find the issue, and I struggled for a couple of years until someone said check the charging lead. This comes down above the leisure battery and is like a jug lead. What had happened is the plug lead to the charger had come loose and it was as simple as that. All fixed ! Let me know if this is your issue and if you want more details of how to find the connection

 

[ThomasHJ]

So, I have my Cali back. It was checked by my VW dealer. Turns out the problem was the earth shunt under the fridge. It was broken. Which caused the central control panel to show 0.0 amperage draw continously and also gave false voltage-readings on the control panel. So in reality my leisure batteries were not running low as fast as the control panel was telling me.

Hope this helps someone in the future with the same problem, as replacing the earth shunt is not expensive, but finding out what the problem is can take a while.

Still have to do some tests to see if everything works as expected now, but assume it will.

 

[Duetveil]

So, I have Cali back. It was checked by my VW dealer. Turns out the problem was the earth shunt under the fridge. It was broken. Which caused the central control panel to show 0.0 amperage draw continously and also gave false voltage-readings on the control panel. So in reality my leisure batteries were not running low as fast as the control panel was telling me.

Hopes this helps someone in the future with the same problem, as replacing teh earth shunt is not expensive, but finding out what the problem is can take a while.

Still have to do some tests to see if everything works as expected now, but assume it will.

Good news!! Pleased you sorted it. Cheers Mike