Allright.  All you "Deluxe Westy" owners here...got a questions for ya.
Where is the ground cable connected to the body on your auxillary battery?  The vehicle battery's ground cable is connected to the wall just below the CPU on fuel injection models (pretty sure all late buses are hooked up the same), but that wall is not on the left side of the engine compartment.

Lamar?  Anthony?  Anyone?

I'm looking at permanantly installing my auxillary battery in my Westy to run a few 12 volt accessories.  Up til now I've just had the marine battery sitting in there, charging it up before I leave, and hooking a power inverter up to it while camping.  I have installed the Hella single relay to charge the spare up while driving.  Right now I'm looking at the only places available on that side of the engine...the wheel well, the spare wheel indentation, or the metal around the engine on the left side.  I think the wheel well looks better right now...but  I want to know where VW (or Westfalia, whoever did it) drilled a hole to connect the ground cable.

certdubtech said...

...the cables for the aux. battery on the driver's side were grounded across the engine compartment with the regular battery ground point.

So, that's what I did.  I got a 49" ground cable from O'Reilly's and stretched it across the engine compartment (up and out of the way) and grounded it at the vehicle's ground point.  Thanks!

From the auxillary battery, I snaked a hot wire up into the cabin, under the Z-bed, and to an auxillary fuse box.  From the fuse box, I installed some 12-volt adapters to hook up my camping accessories.  After hooking the grounds back up, I tested each adapter for power..."Houston, we have liftoff!"  

Now I'm ready to test the charging of the battery on my camping trip this weekend...speaking of...how do I test to see if the battery is getting a charge from the alternator?  I hooked up the Hella relay per instructions, so logically, it should be working properly.

(Off topic...Woo-Hoo!  I hit the 1,000 mark on number of posts!)

Anthony typed:

As far as testing, I would just use the old test light or multi-meter, unhook the pos. wire and see if its getting 12-14V with the bus running.

Did it...got 11-14 volts at idle at start then settled around 13v.  Thanks!