Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 23:27
Snoopy,
He had two solenoids, one was the
Redarc and the other a slave to isolate his Anderson at the back so that the camper battery would be disconnected from the car's aux battery when the engine was off.
We wired his
Redarc conventionally to the crank battery and the aux, and took a feed from the live side of the
Redarc coil to the slave solenoid so that the slave only came on when the
Redarc came on.
From the sound of all your replies and follow-ups to other posters, and the fact that it was working for 3 years, it doesn't sound like a wiring problem - more like a component failure.
Without looking at your system it's a bit hard to tell, but try the following.
Have you done any mods, added stuff that might be causing an inadvertent back feed that is holding the
Redarc on. Been there, done that!!
Have you checked the operation of the
Redarc, ie that when the red light is off there is no voltage going to the live side of the solenoid coil (small terminal underneath the module). Disconnect everything from the output side of the
Redarc, so it's only connected to the crank battery. Also bypass your earth relay that you just installed so that the
Redarc is earthed normally. If there is a nominal 12V on the live side of the coil when the light is off then the
Redarc module is faulty.
When the red light is off, is the
Redarc physically releasing? With the disconnections as above, the large terminal connected to your crank battery should have 12v (nominal) on it, ie between it and earth, the other large terminal should have nothing. If they both have 12V (nominal) then maybe the
Redarc has mechanically seized and cannot release properly, or the contacts otherwise stuck together (welded from a short somewhere - a long shot admittedly)
If the above checks out ok, then I'm out of ideas, sorry.
Frank
FollowupID:
727237