Hi Warren,

If it's not the battery, it's gotta be the bus.

STORY TIME:
One of the local guys herer has a 68 westy with a year-old battery
that wouldn't hold a charge.  He could charge it overnight, then
start the bus and drive it. Any more than an hour parked and it
wouldn't restart. When the engine was running he was getting good
voltage from the generator, and all the ground staps and connections
had been checked. But once it sat for more than an hour, it was flat.

I had a look at it and disconnected the positive battery terminal and
put a multimeter inline. It was pulling 200 mA sitting still. We
pulled all the fuses and got that down to 190 mA.  No wonder his
battery was going flat, there's a big leak somewhere.  Checking the
auxiliary (unfused) wiring we pulled the radio wire and got down to
180. The other wire we hadn't checked lead to the tach he'd recently
installed. Pulling that wire brought the load back to zero.

I recommended that the tach power be relocated to a circuit powered
by the ignition... it's not like you need a tach with the engine
off.  After that he took the battery back to the local FLAPs and
found it was fried.... it seems that if you drain a new (non deep
cycle) battery flat more than twice it's a goner, and that was
exactly the case here. A new battery and a relocated tach wire has
his bus running as well as ever.

QUESTION:
How did you verify your battery? A voltmeter doesn't tell the full
story, you need a load test to know what's really happening inside.
Your FLAPS should be able to do that if you take the battery to them.

Here's some good reading on testing batteries:
http://www.uuhome.de/william.darden/carfaq4.htm

Happy trails,

Greg Potts
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

1973/74/79 Westfakia Conversion **Bob the Tomato**  LY3H
1977 Sunroof Automatic L63H/L90D
http://www.pottsfamily.ca/westfakia
http://www.busesofthecorn.com

On 15-Oct-05, at 7:56 PM, Warren Gaylor wrote:

> I'm in a quandary -- battery only two years old -- checks out fine-
> have had
> system checked for power leaks -- all okay there -- But after
> sitting for over
> a week not enough power to turn over-AND no need to tell you all
> what a pain
> it is to get to battery to connect charger -- any ideas?
>