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Old 11-07-2008, 07:56 AM   #1
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Clicking Relay ??

I have on 07 w/ the charge Wizard installed and hearing an odd clicking near the fuse panel area. Clicks every 20sec or so. I recently serviced the engine battery, and had the negative wire off. Is there a procedure to reset something on the house side?

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Old 11-07-2008, 08:39 AM   #2
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I've had my starter batts out and never had a problem. There is a breaker/fuse in the main line to the fuse panel, I think its a metal box about 1"x.5"x.25". Not sure exactly what its function is but that might be your source. Can't think of anything else in the immediate area of the fuse panel (at least on mine) that would click.
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Old 11-07-2008, 08:42 AM   #3
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Clicking Relay

I have found that box,listed in the manual as a reset, it has a very small button, but this does not seem to do the trick. I have no manual w/ the wizard, but depressing its button just makes it alternate between blinking and solid
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Old 11-07-2008, 09:02 AM   #4
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Clicking Relay

I have this tracked to the battery seperator, and pulled the fuse which is good but the seperatoris quite warm to the touch.
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Old 11-07-2008, 09:30 AM   #5
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My separator (SurePower) was locked on and hummed quietly and got very hot as it was constantly engaged between the batteries. Sounds like my hum might be your clicking. You can pull the green "from starter wire" (small one) and see if that changes anything. If not you're probably looking at a new seperator.
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Old 11-07-2008, 09:36 AM   #6
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Clicking Relay

It seems the house battery was getting into the lower voltage area and causing this problem. running the engine now seems to have cured it so I will plug into shore power and fully charge.
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Old 01-12-2009, 07:23 PM   #7
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HEY! I have that same clicking!
I heard it yesterday and timed it at 17 seconds.
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Old 01-13-2009, 01:37 PM   #8
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Originally Posted by dabeloe1
I have a '08 Sprinter with a very active battery separator and I'm not sure it is supposed to cycle as much as it does.

The van has a 4D AGM house battery and a single 130w Kyocera solar panel with a Blue Sky controller. No inverter or generator is installed.

While the van is parked, and during daylight hours, the battery separator will on most days cycle on and off (or is that in and out?) every few seconds for hours on end. Other days it might only cycle a couple of times per hour. It does not appear to cycle at night.

The voltage reading on the controller will show anywhere from 13.6 to 14.2 volts on most days. When the separator cycles the voltage shown on the controller will quickly drop anywhere from 1/4 to 3/4 of a volt. When it cycles again the voltage will race back up to whatever the higher number was.

Is this normal? Is this an indication that one of the batteries is not fully charged? Could the frequency of the cycles damage anything? Is the solar panel charging the van battery as well as the house battery?

The response I received from Sportsmobile was to "keep the van plugged in so the separator doesn't have to work so hard".

At this time keeping it plugged in is not an option-that's partly why we had the solar panel installed. Would a second solar panel help in any way?

Thanks for your opinions!
My separator was clicking also but not in any regular time rather rapid clicking in spurts. After a short drive it stopped and I have not had a problem since. This bothers me and one of these days I plan to rig in a backup switch or secondary relay so I don't get caught in the boonies with a full failure. I might have had a poor connection because I did check the start signal wire and ground while it was chattering. Seems OK now.


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Old 07-02-2010, 03:43 PM   #9
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Re: Clicking Relay ??

The observed clicking noise is the Automatic Charging Relay (ACR) (aka, battery separator). This is the magnetic latch closing or opening. There are several conditions that automatically invoke this function to join or separate the house and starting battery banks. Some conditions include timed delay while others are based on your actions (e.g., pressing the remote start button for manual jump start from the house battery). I'm new to this equipment, but my BlueSea ACR is closing (I can hear the click when it does so) seconds after engine start-up following storage without shore power hook-up, and again shortly after engine shutdown. I believe it is because the voltage levels the ACR is monitoring are in the range for automatic switch closure via the relay in order to support alternator charging and then switch opening once voltage readings come down sufficiently to indicate a charging source is no longer available.
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Old 07-02-2010, 04:26 PM   #10
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Re: Clicking Relay ??

There's a range of voltages with my setup that will cause the separator to click back and forth as the voltage builds from the solar. I takes a while before the voltage has built to the point where the separator stays primarily in the one position. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.


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