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151

Omega Electrical and Audio Help / Re: Booster Pack

« on: 08 August 2017, 00:08:56 »

wow some of those prices are extortionate.  shop around you should be able to get a basic one for £15 delivered from china.

i have 2, last one was £14, "1500mah".  First was £36 and is a little larger and came with a zipped bag and lots of extras.  that one claims to be 16800mah, not sure about that but i tried the ultimate test - disconnect the mig battery entirely and try and start just on the lithium one.    it works.  so it won't spin your engine for ever but if your only problem is the battery, even if the battery is totally flat, it will start you car.

here is the second one i bought http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/232277190721

first one i bought looks identical to this one (green and black) http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/122423663043

beware sellers with less than 50 sales.

I accidentally drained my old "16,800mah" one  last week and took it apart today to try and revive it.  turns out it is, under the case and with the wrapper removed, 3 x 3.7V 4amp batteries so actually only 4,000mah.    Still it has twice started my 2.6 on its own with the car battery removed. 

I've ordered a replacement "50,800mah" one in case I can't revive the one cell that has switched off.

As you have found, Lithium batteries cannot deal with over discharging.  In fact, the unit should have safety precautions to prevent that, but if it was cheap Chinese tat...

actually the problem is the cells are too clever - two are reading 4.3V and the third one is zero, yes 0.00, nothing at all.  the cell electronics seem to have shut it down.

bigron's trick is the first one i tried, no joy yet.  next step is the freezer then a re-charge.  then the bin.

152

Omega Electrical and Audio Help / Re: Booster Pack

« on: 07 August 2017, 16:55:38 »

surely if the connection fails the engine will stop, with no supply to the alternator therefore no output from the alternator. 

unless its a soot chucker.

in any case its the same as an intermittent connection to the original battery eg a loose earth connection.

153

Omega Electrical and Audio Help / Re: Booster Pack

« on: 07 August 2017, 16:31:19 »

if you remove the battery and connect another car battery via jump leads all you have is a car with a battery wired in but with longer connections.

a booster pack is slightly different in that the lithium ones are not designed to be charged at 14.7V so you shouldn't leave them connected after the car has started. whether you have disconnected the main battery or not. 

having said all that normally you would leave the original battery connected, unless it is shorted or damaged. I only removed it as a test of the boost pack.  I could have discharged my battery completely to test the boost pack but it wasn't necessary or good for the car battery and would take ages.

i don't know why your electrician said that, if anything i would say the danger is connecting jump leads to a battery in situ that is shorted internally.

154

Omega Electrical and Audio Help / Re: Booster Pack

« on: 07 August 2017, 15:45:51 »

wow some of those prices are extortionate.  shop around you should be able to get a basic one for £15 delivered from china.

i have 2, last one was £14, "1500mah".  First was £36 and is a little larger and came with a zipped bag and lots of extras.  that one claims to be 16800mah, not sure about that but i tried the ultimate test - disconnect the mig battery entirely and try and start just on the lithium one.    it works.  so it won't spin your engine for ever but if your only problem is the battery, even if the battery is totally flat, it will start you car.

here is the second one i bought http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/232277190721

first one i bought looks identical to this one (green and black) http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/122423663043

beware sellers with less than 50 sales.

I accidentally drained my old "16,800mah" one  last week and took it apart today to try and revive it.  turns out it is, under the case and with the wrapper removed, 3 x 3.7V 4amp batteries so actually only 4,000mah.    Still it has twice started my 2.6 on its own with the car battery removed. 

I've ordered a replacement "50,800mah" one in case I can't revive the one cell that has switched off. 

155

Omega General Help / Re: Vibrations

« on: 06 August 2017, 23:52:37 »

A (genuinely) deformed disc will never right itself under even gentle driving. Skim or bin.

mine did

156

General Discussion Area / Re: firefox finally had enough

« on: 04 August 2017, 13:49:03 »

what i thought i'd miss is the shortcut option - in firefox you could allocate a search box on a webpage to a letter eg I allocated wikipedias search box to w, so just typing "w vauxhall" in firefox's address bar would take you straight to the wikipedia page for vauxhall.

however chrome seems to have imported it, along with all my history and bookmarks

157

Omega General Help / Re: Vibrations

« on: 04 August 2017, 13:34:19 »

my warped new discs problem (judder on braking) has gone away, it gradually disappeared while i restricted myself to gentle braking.  i concluded that a previous very sudden brake application had unevenly worn the disc and over time the wear evened out.

a few things on the mig seem to fix themselves eg intermittent dash bulb problem has now gone completely.  I hope.

158

General Discussion Area / firefox finally had enough

« on: 04 August 2017, 13:26:00 »

finally switched from firefox browser to chrome.  i tried to stay with it, despite the regular 'updates' which lost all my cuuustomisations  and despite them 'fixing' with the layout which wasn't broken.  final straw was script errors with firefox on ebay causing hangs. aded the 'no script' add on but at the cost of disabling all scripts on all pages which is a pain to  administer.  i did try my best to stick with it

159

General Car Chat / Re: Charging Leisure Batteries on the move II

« on: 03 August 2017, 18:06:05 »

yes but you could still keep the battery at full charge and use the surplus amps to power everything else .

That's exactly what a conventional alternator does. Floating the battery at 13.8-14.4 V = keeping it fully charged and powering everything else from the alternator - all of the time the engine is running.

no i meant at full charge i.e. 12.75V not on charge (13.8-14.4V) which agreed is what a conventional set up does.

160

General Car Chat / Re: Charging Leisure Batteries on the move II

« on: 03 August 2017, 15:01:59 »

i think there may be a misunderstanding here.  regenerative braking to my mind means an electric car getting amps by using the electric motors to slow the car.  in a fossil fuelled euro 6 car surely all it means is the alternator maxes its load on the fan belt when the car is braking and outputs high amps to the battery and any other electrical load needing it. fossil euro 6 cars have no other source of amps than the alternator and the battery, i.e. they have no electric motors driving/taking energy from the wheels.

i don't think euro 6 cars would deliberately run with the battery off charge (i.e. below 12.75V).  has anyone with such a car done a voltage reading while running?

Yes, it's simply offsetting the load on the alternator until such time as it comes "for free", such as when engine braking is in use.  In order to achieve this you need to maintain the battery in a state of partial discharge so that it is able to take advantage of such opportunities as they arise, hence, in the normal scheme of things, it's maintained at less than 100% fully charged.

yes but you could still keep the battery at full charge and use the surplus amps to power everything else .  if euro 6 cars don't do that then the battery will inevitably be left at less than full charge, resulting in early replacement. 

i suspect euro 6 cars do leave their batteries fully charged and claims they don't may be marketing hype to sell  unnecessary devices. OP where is your opening quote from? i can't see any mention on http://techcenter.mercedes-benz.com/en/blueefficiency/detail.html

161

Omega General Help / Re: boot gas struts

« on: 03 August 2017, 12:52:07 »

My saloon boot lid just pops open a couple of inches when triggered. Is it supposed to open wide? If so I will replace with these.

no thats normal.  all the marelli struts will do is restore the factory performance - pops up a few inches then easy to lift the rest.  you'd need stronger struts to do more.  apparently some aftermarket struts do less i.e. more manual effort needed beyond the first 2 inches.

162

Omega General Help / Re: boot gas struts

« on: 03 August 2017, 00:21:50 »

i suppose you could fit higher newton rated struts, strong enough to push the boot up immediately.  or play around with the angles.  might be difficult to close again

163

General Car Chat / Re: Charging Leisure Batteries on the move II

« on: 03 August 2017, 00:18:14 »

i think there may be a misunderstanding here.  regenerative braking to my mind means an electric car getting amps by using the electric motors to slow the car.  in a fossil fuelled euro 6 car surely all it means is the alternator maxes its load on the fan belt when the car is braking and outputs high amps to the battery and any other electrical load needing it. fossil euro 6 cars have no other source of amps than the alternator and the battery, i.e. they have no electric motors driving/taking energy from the wheels.

i don't think euro 6 cars would deliberately run with the battery off charge (i.e. below 12.75V).  has anyone with such a car done a voltage reading while running?

164

General Car Chat / false SORN

« on: 02 August 2017, 23:57:45 »

well the car that has been dumped in our busy road has just become untaxed for the requisite 2 months and 2 days before DVLA will lift a finger.

but it has just become SORN .  Even though it is on a public road and hasn't moved for 4 months!

is this someone working the system, knowing you can get away with 2 months and 2 days without tax and now moving on to a similar SORN scam?

anyone know the best way to progress this?

165

General Car Chat / Re: Charging Leisure Batteries on the move II

« on: 02 August 2017, 18:27:20 »

If you use a voltage sensing relay to switch it in, it should just get disconnected when the car's battery is not being charged and it means it won't be discharged by the car's systems. That behaviour is probably OK unless you're relying on it to be charged heavily while on the move.

Need it fully charged to run the fridge whilst on the move, and again, to use the mover when I get home, as it's too tight a turn to reverse into it's parking slot.

The fridge should be run from the vehicle battery when on the move

Agreed, but my point is the leisure battery will only be maintained at the same voltage as the car battery, i.e. 80%.

Not enough to use the mover.

are you sure about the 80%?  the caravan battery is in parallel with the car battery so should end up in the same state of charge as the car batt.  are euro 6 cars in normal use really leaving their battery at only 80% charge?  if so it's good news for battery manufacturers.

Apparently so ... reason is, I believe, to allow "space" for the regenerative braking to put the elecktrickery it makes .. so the alternators "backoff" saving power (fuel) and the braking tops up the battery instead ..... 

yes i got that. it's simply the car telling the alternator when it's braking and the alternator then putting max load on the belt. no electicity actually comes directly from the brakes/wheels.  I can see the car would do that when  loads are on, i.e. supply the load more from the alternator while braking and the battery when not.  i don't see the need to not keep the battery 100% charged though.