yorke7
New Member
So i'm not auto electrician but like many others i wanted a 2nd battery, 12v setup but couldn't afford an auto electricians services. I learnt, consulted a 12v expert and eventually built one myself. It's been in and working for over a year now with no problems at all, but with the cold weather lately i've noticed my ute taking a long time to start. Eventually it wouldn't start at all and i found it weird because i had just driven about 30 mins, turned off the car, went to start it again not 5 min later and it wouldn't at all, as if the starter were 100% dead. I got the jumper cables out but thought i'd try something first.
I have a circuit breaker in the engine bay between the starter and the 2nd battery in the canopy, this circuit breaker can be deliberately triggered by pressing a button, thus disconnecting the starter from everything else. But this shouldn't make any difference as I have a projecta 25A DC-DC, which should stop the 2nd battery from taking any power away from the starter? Anyway I open the circuit breaker, try starting the car again and it starts first try, straight away, easy as you please. I have no idea why this happened and have since closed the circuit breaker again but have noticed the car taking longer and longer to crank over...again.
So my question is two fold: does anyone know what is going on here? and if not is there a problem with just leaving the circuit breaker open when i'm not drawing any power from the 2nd battery? I rarely get to camp these days and when not camping nothing is drawn from the secondary battery, so i'm thinking about just leaving the breaker open until i go on a trip again and need charge for the 2nd battery. But i don't know if leaving it open is bad? or if deliberately tripping and reseting the breaker over and over is also bad?
Apologies for the small essay, I tried to only write whats needed to know for this specific problem aaand in light of that; yes i do have circuit breakers that are closer to the secondary battery and on everything, not just the one in the engine bay.
Thanks for your time to anyone who read this,
Yorke
I have a circuit breaker in the engine bay between the starter and the 2nd battery in the canopy, this circuit breaker can be deliberately triggered by pressing a button, thus disconnecting the starter from everything else. But this shouldn't make any difference as I have a projecta 25A DC-DC, which should stop the 2nd battery from taking any power away from the starter? Anyway I open the circuit breaker, try starting the car again and it starts first try, straight away, easy as you please. I have no idea why this happened and have since closed the circuit breaker again but have noticed the car taking longer and longer to crank over...again.
So my question is two fold: does anyone know what is going on here? and if not is there a problem with just leaving the circuit breaker open when i'm not drawing any power from the 2nd battery? I rarely get to camp these days and when not camping nothing is drawn from the secondary battery, so i'm thinking about just leaving the breaker open until i go on a trip again and need charge for the 2nd battery. But i don't know if leaving it open is bad? or if deliberately tripping and reseting the breaker over and over is also bad?
Apologies for the small essay, I tried to only write whats needed to know for this specific problem aaand in light of that; yes i do have circuit breakers that are closer to the secondary battery and on everything, not just the one in the engine bay.
Thanks for your time to anyone who read this,
Yorke