Leisure Battery - Newbie question

[Dave_374363992]

Any help appreciated!

Have just bought a second hand van and it has no battery - the owner said they removed it for their new van, which is fair enough.

There are 2 cables where the battery was (one red, which I presume to be live), however these have no connectors and are just bare wires.

Can I just fit connectors onto the end and connect them to my new battery?

Forgive my ignorance but wanted to check first.

Thanks

Dave

 

[Damian]

Dave, as long as one cable is Red and the other is Black, which is normally what is fitted, just get a couple of battery clamps and connect the wires to the respective clamp.

Normally one terminal is bigger than the other to save connecting the wrong way around.

You would probably be better off getting the snap on clamps which are pre coloured Red and Blue

 

[Dave_374363992]

Hi Damian

Thanks for your reply - that sounds good to me.

Do I specifically need a leisure battery or could I use a car battery?

We will be connected to a mains hookup and won't use a mover so I presume it would only be for back up purposes anyway?

Cheers

Dave

 

[ProfJohnL]

Hello Dave,

Provided you are always connected to mains when using the caravan, then a car battery will probably more than sufficient.

In years gone by, the built in chargers were quite crude, and they needed a battery to be connected to act as an electrical load and to 'smooth' the chargers output. Without a battery the chargers output was very rough, and might caus esome systems to malfunction or worse actually damagae them.

In more recent years caravan manufacturers have had to fit quite sophisticated chargers, which in fact are actually high quality power supplies with smoothed outputs. It is quite feasible to run the basic caravan on the charger alone without a battery. If all you want is few lights and teh water pump them this might do for you.

If you want to run more then you will need the battery to supplement the power supplies capacity to cope with the full demand.

Regardless of whether you fit a battery or not, the bare ended cables must be protected to prevent unintentional short circuits.