Camper van owners

[Ledkr]

Hello all. Wondering if you can help me.
We have a mazda bongo that we bought last year. It has a leisure battery which runs the lights, ignition, electric roof bed and anything you want to plug into the gig lighter socket. It has plug sockets which only work when on electric hook up.
Is there any way we can use the electric socket when not on hook up?
Does hook up re charge the leisure battery and if not is there any way it can?
Thanks if you can help

[colleysmill]

Dh says you can get an inverter which converts 12v to 240v to use the sockets but its not very efficient and will quickly drain the battery so its not brilliant unless youre going to run the engine at the same time.

On some vans the ehu will charge the leisure battery - my dads modern van did, our older t25 doesn't.

Hth

[Ledkr]

Thanks. Yes I've got the inverter but it does drain quickly. We wanted to use the stop overs in France but usually no hook up and it's useful to be able to plug the DVD in or charge our phones.

[colleysmill]

Ah now for phone charging we have a pebble battery which will recharge an android about 4 times without hook up power and then can be recharged by the cigarette lighter (although our t25 didn't have one so had to fit that too!)

Can't help with the dvd player though

[hz]

Hook up will recharge the leisure battery! We charge our phones on the cigarette lighter, just use an adapter. Possibly you can get an adapter which would allow you to run DVD off cigarette lighter too - (I presume a portable DVD player). Driving will then recharge the leisure battery too. (We have a Bongo too).

[sandyballs]

Do you find your Bongos ridiculously expenive on fuel? We've had ours about a year and love it for camping but really wanted it to be our only vehicle but it is just too expensive to drive on a daily basis.

[sandyballs]

And another question! We have leisure batteries in our bongo, what do I need to buy to use electric hook up on a campsite. I looked in our camping shop but couldn't work it out, not sure if I'm being particularly dense about this though .

[hz]

Yes Sandyballs, have to admit it is rather thirsty. I wouldn't want to use it as an everyday car. For hook up, you just need a connecting cable something like this.

[colleysmill]

Ah the curse of the campervan - very very thirsty! Can't speak for bongos but ours likes a drink (bit like the owners!)

I know next to nothing of bongos but there are a few people we know in the vw scene who have converted to lpg - not overly cheap and I think you lose space in the van accommodating it - but makes it cheaper to run. We are umming and ahhhing about it tbh.