Different Redarc Question

It is about 3 years old and seemed to be working OK.
My 4 year old batteries went flat and I charged them up and took them for testing and they were pretty tired so put 2 new Centuries in.

3 weeks late BOTH were dead flat.

Now its happened again.
I do have the button on the dash and also have a relay activated by the starter wire to pull them both in when starting.

With Aux discon I still have 13 v at both the little terminals on top of the unit
That is the start assist termianl and the earth terminal. The newly installed relay is stopping the voltage going to earth but if I put the original earth wire in I would have a dead short to earth from the unit.

This has probably been draing the batteries I guess but IS THE UNIT FAULTY by doing this

The extra relay activated by the starter wire is presently disconnected from the power wire to activate it

Hi Snoopy
RE:"With Aux discon I still have 13 v at both the little terminals on top of the unit
That is the start assist termianl and the earth terminal. The newly installed relay is stopping the voltage going to earth but if I put the original earth wire in I would have a dead short to earth from the unit. ""


For the black [earth ] terminal that would be quite normal & if it was a dead short that wire would melt
Are you sure your start assist switch is not switched on or faulty ?
Try disconnecting it then reconnect while listening , do you hear the Redarc operate
If the redarc is permanently on it will flatten BOTH batteries over a week or two.

Peter

Hi Snoopy
Re:"I do have the button on the dash and also have a relay activated by the starter wire to pull them both in when starting" you should also check that RELAY It may be stuck on!!

Peter

Ok been out and checked all wiring. The relay that hauls both together has the power wire to activate it disconnected.

The wire from the aux battery to that relay has 5.? volts on it as that battery is dead flat.

The wire that goes from the other side of that relay to the blue wire has 13 v on it.

I thought it should have none till the relay pulls in to activate it from Aux battery and supply 12 v to activate the redarc.

The two little terminals both have 13 volts on them which would give a dead short to earth without the relay I installed today.

The readarc LED is not on and any amount of disconnecting and reconnecting wires makes no difference. No clicks at all

The dash button doesnt work as I cut one wire off it when I put the relay in and the wire goes direct from aux battery to the relay.
Seems the short was the problem hopefully.
The wire however did not get hot but I see the aux battery ahs been venting liquid as there is mist around the caps

The other thread I was referring to was thread # 86278.

What I Intend to do is unhook the wires from the Redarc and just bolt them together and see what Happens

That after all is how the Toyotas are originally anyway.

I dont think it should run voltage to earth when its turned off..

Snoopy, All these controllers will have some voltage going through them as the controller circuit continually monitors the voltage in the main battery. The current dissipated is small. The controllers have to be on all the time to monitor. then when required they will switch the solenoid on, I know you know this but i am clarifying the bleed to earth from the controller. If your problem is not related to recent changes to your system that you have done then I would isolate the controller for a week or two to see if it is the controller at fault. This means you can still charge the main battery and see if it runs down. If it does that would indicate a fault somewhere else.

By charging both batteries and isolating them you can also get a better picture of just where the fault is. That is, is it in the controller, aux battery and circuit or in the main vehicle circuitry.

Cheers, Bruce.

Dont think so as it has been working for nearly 3 years and has just lately I have been having battery trouble.

I installed it all myself and it worked fine.

What did you do to fix it

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

Sorry, forgot to add ..

In the above tests, switch off or disconnect the start assist.

Gee, I wish there was an edit function here!!

"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."

Could be that start assist and/or your wiring for it. Disconnect it completely - unplug it at the Redarc - and see how your batteries go then.

Frank

Car stopped ign off

With the starting battery charged and connected I have 13 .6 volts on that terminal and none on the aux battery terminal

The blue wire has 13.6 v and so does the earth wire. which to me is not correct as I would have thought the aux battey would supply the voltage to the blue wire not the other way around.

Also the earth wire terminal should not have a voltage reading on it??????

Car presumably is charging as I have used it occasionally and after a run it starts fine.

It is just when it sits for a bout 10 days they both go flat like it has an earth lleak somewhere.

Hi Snoopy
A quick question , when you say the black wire has 13.6v on it ,IS THAT WITH IT CONNECTED TO EARTH & WHERE ARE YOU TESTING IT TO???
If it is still connected to earth then it cannot have voltage to earth!!unless the connection is very BAD,
Take BOTH Blue wires out of picture, disconnect both @ the Redarc .
Disconnect the aux bat @ the Redarc

Now
[1]check from Redarc aux terminal to earth, do you have voltage?
If no ,that is OK

If yes then you may have a problem with the Redarc contacts stuck on.

This would account for not hearing any sound as it closes
Redarc needs replacing

If [1] is OK then
[2] leave voltmeter connected to aux term & earth ,Start engine, run @ idle, initially there should be no voltage @ aux terminal but when main battery reachs approx 13.6v voltage should appear @ aux terminal

This may only take a few seconds if start battery is well charged, so you may ned some help , some one to start engine while you observe meter

Peter

Have done that and am trying a few things

Thanks

So many possibilities it is hard to give you a "do this" or "do that".

As per Peter's advice (removing the Aux battery and Blue wire and the fact that the black has to read 0V if earthed properly) my first thought was that maybe you were not measuring the black to Earth as Peter suggests - if you measured it to the battery then yes you would see the 13.6V.

Also, is 13.6 not a little high for battery with car off - I would expect about 12.6V on a good battery open circuit voltage - so maybe your meter is not too accurate in that regard - not critical unless you want to know exactly what your charging voltage is with car running (as in if you had a fault in the car charging circuit that it was not achieving more than the cut in voltage of the Redarc.

If that was the problem then you would not charge the House battery at all from the car so you would have a somewhat charged starting battery and a low charge house battery - but I think you said "both go flat".

So if you are saying both batteries charge OK but then go flat together then you would have to suspect leakage also could be a fault in the Redarc and the batteries are permanently connected.

To me the only absolute proof would be to disconnect the Redarc completely from the system and see if you get normal behaviour of the starting battery - as in it does not start to go flat over a few days. Then put the Redarc back on the starting battery cable only (without the Aux and Blue cables) to see if the Redarc alone causes the starting battery to discharge which would indicate leakage through the Redarc to Earth.

Ken

Have removed the Redarc and buying a new one as it seems the solenoid has stopped working.
Thanks for all the replies.

I am sure we all have our fingers crossed for you.

Good luck

Ken


There is nothing as valuable as first hand experience with a problem - and then you will probably never use that knowledge again.

A follow up here

Uninstalled Redarc and bolted + wires together on 18th..

Now the 31st and car still starts

have ordered a new Redarc so will see how it goes.

Thanks for all the advice.