Nissan Patrol 4x4 (Africa)

Jumped into my Troll on Saturday with intent of running through to Pta.... turned the key only to be met with a click..clack..click.. clack followed by an electronic alarm squealing away.

Turns out he alarm was from my 2nd battery national luna system monitor which also showed all red.

Took out said 2nd battery and still no joy in starting without it ; am quite p’d off that this has caused my vehicle to be immobilised. Battery going in for once over and charge then refit to see if we can get going again which will be back to a different 4x4 installer to check entire system.

My troll is now a whole 2 years old with a miserly 22000 km on the clock... can only think that the battery has run as I have not driven it for while.. any case still not happy with this situation.

Anyone here had a similar experience?

Cheers, Peter V

If my Patrol stand for 5 days without driving it, the battery is totally flat!

I now put my solar panel on the roofrack and connect it to the main battery and it kept both batteries fully charged.

Jip, kids left the interior lights on for the weekend and unfortunately the CPU's needs power to work so no start. After charging all's fine again

Am harbouring the theory that the 2nd battery is the problem child... on last driving my Troll about 5 weeks ago it started first time and while driving I noticed that the nat luna monitor showed that the 2nd battery had run down to amber.

Surely this should not kill the primary battery / prevent car from starting?

Any views...

Peter

Peter
The NL system should isolate the starting battery and the sevondary battery from each other when the vehicle is switched off. You may have a power leak somewhere.

On every vehicle i've had, whenever something goes wrong, 9 times out of 10 it has been a modification / addition that has been at fault.

I agree Jorrie... the nat luna is a bona fide dual system with a "smart" isolater which is intended to function as a split charge isolater... anyhow the monitor shows both batteries in the red challenge it to get vehicle going so I can take it in for an "expert" once over.

Cheers,

Peter

Peter, my experience is that modern cars that stand for extended periods are very heavy on batteries.

The reason is that the immobilizer and possible tracking systems continuosly draw power, and batteries that stand for long periods should ideally be maintained at close to maximum capacity. A battery that stands flat or nearly flat for any length of time will soon die.

However the second battery should be isolated from the main battery, and it should thus not be possible for either battery to drain the other. It could be that you have two seperate problems here?

Furthermore, once you do get it started, you may find the NL system struggling to get the second battery to charge. My experience with these systems is that iff the second battery is very flat when it attempts to connect the second battery, the system measures a large voltage drop, and immediately switches off again, with the result that the second battery doesn't charge. You should be able to see this happening on the display.

If this happens, you can override the system controller by opening the control panel and connecting a piece of wire temporarily to the two small terminals of the solenoid, but remove it later because while the bridge is in place the two batteries are permanently connected.

Thanks for the pointers Mr C.

The car has clearly been standing for too long and does indeed have smart tracking gizmos et al that will draw power.

I have removed the primary battery and hooked it up to my charger... it was stone dead. I have charged it overnite and will install this afternoon. The secondary deep cycle sealed unit has gone to battery centre for charging and will also be refitted today. I will then take the car to Megaworld 4x4 for a check up to see if there is any leakage in the entire system.

Looking at the milage accumulated over the period of ownership and the fact it has full tanks from before last petrol price hike underscores that I am not using it enough! I will now take this as a personal challenge to use it a helluva lot more frequently

Cheers,

Peter V

Hope the batteries are still OK.

I am myself buying a new battery this afternoon...