Hi all, Quick question about my vsr, I fitted one to my t25 about 3 years ago, fit and forget, I have just removed the starter battery as I'm replacing it tomorrow as it's leaking Question is why have I still got 13.5 volts at the starter battery end with no battery in place, I thought they only charged one way, glad I checked as the poss wire was left dangling and could have shorted out, I have removed the fuse to make that end safe The bus is on electric hook up to power the fridge and the battery charger for the leisure battery as we are going away tomorrow I'm not sure if the vsr is working correctly or not,seems a bit dangerous to me Thanks
Ok, it's a mega van mats product, same as the durite one, so are we saying that it's working correctly,
Yes, but not ideally if you are charging from a single mains charger it can lead to overcharging one of the batteries.
The battery charger is a caravan battery charger I purchased from a caravan shop, the bloke said it is fine to be left on as it would be on site in a caravan, from what I can remember it's meant to maintain certain voltage but not sure as it was a few years back now Its connected via the consumer unit to the charger and then to the battrry
As long as it doesn't take the battery over the gasing voltage of the battery like some smart chargers do it will be OK.
If its a wet cell, and the charger maintains 13.8 volts on the battery at normal temperatures, that will do no damage, as that is a standard float charge 24/7 voltage. Above that, the battery will tend to gas more. If all the batteries in the system are essentially the same, the VSR makes the voltages balance out . Lead acid batteries in good condition tend to show the same voltages when at similar states of charge. As they become more charged, the voltage across the battery gets higher. So the first battery in a pair stops charging, then the second battery will catch up. Overcharging should not happen, unless you use an old fashioned transformer and couple of diodes type of jobby as used on classic cars to knacker their batteries, in which case leaving it on too long results in all your batteries hot, gassing and at 17 volts... More often than not, its people letting the battery go flat and then being unable to charge it or forgetting for days or weeks, rather than overcharging. Then the batteries sulphate up and require either the skip or battery charger voodoo which may work on lightly damaged batteries at the cost of future life expectancy, or not at all on badly neglected ones. A badly sulphated battery usually shows a high charging voltage shortly after going on charge as it has good voltages but zero capacity left, as its plates are mostly coated with insulating material.
