Westy battery charger

Gary this subject has been covered quite a few times.

Have a look in Useful Westfalia threads for starters.

Will do

If it's the original Westy charger (LG20 - big black box under the rear seat) then it charges both batteries simultaneously, with diodes in each circuit to separate them. So if you main batt is being charged the LG20 is working ok and the only problem can be in the diode or the wiring to the leisure battery.
OTOH your charger may be different from mine ('86 Westy) 'cos the LG20 is all brute force and ignorance, it isn't clever and doesn't switch off when the battery is fully charged..

Here's circuit diagram for the LG20: http://www.westfaliat3.info/WestfaliaBatteryChargerLG20.pdf


If you do choose to replace the charger there are several modern intelligent chargers available which are superior to the LG20. Here's a thread from this site describing a rather elegant replacement.
http://www.brick-yard.co.uk/forum/westy-onboard-charger-replacement_topic40854.html

Some people also like the CTEK chargers.

The original charger is capable of 8 amps or more so you can fire up your Eberspacher heater whilst running on mains. Personally I just use a cheapo 1/2 amps charger from Lidl/Aldi and let it run for a couple of days to top up the batteries (one after the other) during the winter.

jp

I've replaced mine with a 1210 3yrs ago. Lots of extra room under the seat now.
They are spendy...quality bit of kit. Never worry about charging again!

I'm not really sure why you would want to charge both (Leisure and starter) as long as you carry out the 'famed' interior light/radio wiring mod the starter battery will be completely isolated when on camp. This is how Westfalia should have done the wiring in the first place and gaurantee's the engine will start however much juice has been used whilst camping.

Now finding a single output smart charger (stepped and float charge) around 10amps will be much cheaper...Numax do one for around £60

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/10-AMP-NUMAX-LEIS ... d7ff2744e4

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Amperor-18Amp-4 ... 106&sr=1-2

Martin

Edited by Red Westie - 29 Jan 11 at 18:34

Interesting read and sounds very impressive, I would even say useful if you rarely used a mains lead. However, in practice I would say at least 1 in 3 camps we go on have hookup and an opportunity for that illusive 100% charge.  Of course thats how I use mine so this expensive bit of kit wouldn't bring much benefit to me.

I've decided to stick with the Westy charger as it seems to be working OK now, all I do now is once a week (normally Sunday) I just turn the charger on and leave it charging all day and this seems to be working well.

flyy wrote: Joker_Club wrote: Was looking at re-doing the leisure battery charging side of things, and the Sterling battery-to-battery charger stuff looks great (12100 model) , BUT as Flyy says, pretty bloody expensive, it`ll cost you about £400 to do it properly Charger (Sterling pc1210) cost me £150 my sparky mate fitted it for £20. Some new crimps and tested. Job done.

my old 2.1 california had the 90amp alternator

Done the job now, bit of a mission but managed to sort it. Installed a Sterling Power AR12VD Advanced Regulator, which takes control of the alternator ( it by-passes the original inbuilt regulator) and makes the alty put out enough volts to get the batteries fully charged, then drops to a lower rate to keep them topped up, like a modern 3 stage / 4 stage mains charger does. The Sterling tech. stuff says that to fully charge a 12V lead acid battery you need to put in an initial charge of around 15V (depends on how flat the batt is, and what type it is) and then this reduces once the battery gets near full and the unit changes over to keep the batts topped at full capacity. A standard alty regulator drops the output very quickly to less than 14V as it senses voltage at the alty and not the battery. This lower voltage is the reason that batteries don`t get a full charge, usually about half their true capacity (note that it makes no difference how many amp output the alty is, if you`ve got a 90 amp alty it still won`t charge the batts fully, just half-charge them quicker )