Kingham leisure battery

Hi all, we have just taken delivery of a new 2019 Kingham and it has been supplied with a 90 amp hr leisure battery.
Is this correct as the info I have seen suggests it should be larger

In 2017 & 2018 the specs stated "Split charged 105 amp hour leisure battery"
In 2019 the specs says only "Split charged leisure battery"

In 2017, my van came with a 90AH Hankook. During the initial inspection the dealer said these batteries were poor and he offered to upgrade it.

AutoSleepy_Don wrote:In 2017 & 2018 the specs stated "Split charged 105 amp hour leisure battery"
In 2019 the specs says only "Split charged leisure battery"

In 2017, my van came with a 90AH Hankook. During the initial inspection the dealer said these batteries were poor and he offered to upgrade it.

Thanks for the reply Autosleepy the battery I have is also a Hankook, it just seems strange that amp hrs would be reduced down for this year

Seemingly batteries are having their stated capacities reduced so as to match real-world conditions. i.e. the battery is exactly the same as before, but the stated capacity is shown as being less.

If that’s true Spospe (and I’m not questioning you) then about time, IMO the manufacturers have been pushing figures for a while now.

It’s also about time A/S put something better than an 80 watt solar panel on the roof so the battery capacity becomes less important.

Dbvwt wrote:If that’s true Spospe (and I’m not questioning you) then about time, IMO the manufacturers have been pushing figures for a while now.

It’s also about time A/S put something better than an 80 watt solar panel on the roof so the battery capacity becomes less important.

It is true.
Back in 2012/2013 we cut open hundreds of old batteries we took in after fitting new ones to see why some worked well and others caused so much damage to Alternators and the chargers we repaired.

It was clear that the budget batteries did not contain the chemistry/construction inside to warrant the capacity ratings on the labels.
Following formal testing of some of the batteries, our suspicions were confirmed, so we tackled the biggest Battery wholesaler in the UK.

This resulted in a very threatening letter from one of the top 30 Law firms in the World, a copy of it can be found near the bottom of this page : http://www.aandncaravanservices.co.uk/campaign-for-battery-change.php
 Note it is dated March 2018.

We replied to the threats by pointing out I had Cancer, with a poor prognosis, and unlikely to be around by the time the issue reached Court, so suggested they do their worst. We also sent copies of some of the evidence to back our claims.

There then followed a period of 'negotiation' and in June 2018 all of the Asian manufactured batteries from the said wholesaler had new labels that better reflected the batteries real capacity. For example one Numax battery in the range that had previously been labelled at 85Ah, became a realistic 75Ah, yet the battery was physically identical to the previous model.  


In tackling other importers of Asian manufactured batteries we were less successful. 
But on contacting the DBEIS, the governments 'Big Brother' of Trading Standards, we found they were already interested in the mis labelling of batteries and to our delight had already been to see the NCC's David Reid re some 'anomalies' with the NCC 'Verified' battery scheme.


We nominated a number of batteries that we had tested and knew to be no where near the description on the label, or the NCC 'verified' description, and in November 2018 around 60 batteries were shipped to Germany for capacity testing with the aim of creating the evidence needed to tackle the 'corruption'. 'Corrupt' was the word used by a senior figure to describe this segment of the battery market, not my words.

Results are expected late Spring, but some other manufacturers/importers have got wind of what is happening and preempting Legal Action by changing the labelling prior to the results being made public. 
I wasn't aware that Hankook were one of those, but the batteries are manufactured by the same Korean battery manufacturer of other mis-labelled batteries, so not at all surprised.  

Hopefully other importers/retailers will follow that lead.

We are hoping the NCC's verified battery scheme will then come under very close scrutiny to explain how some of the NCC's Asian batteries are at odds with real test results. As an example, every expert we speak to is puzzled as to how the quality Exide EP800, weighing a chunky 26.5kg, only receives a "NCC Verified" 360 cycles, yet the very ordinary Leoch Xtreme XR1750 is 'verified' at 600 cycles with only 21.2kg of Lead.  



Note that the mislabelling 'scandal' does not apply to the top battery manufacturers products, like Varta, Exide, Victron, Bosch, Banner, etc which all demonstrated high quality construction/chemistry that matched the labels when they were cut open. Indeed the reverse is true, in that they often  'under rate' the batteries. The BS EN 50342 test data we saw for the Yuasa L36-EFB showed it had achieved 230 cycles and 104AH capacity. Yet Yuasa 'claim' only 200 cycles  and 100Ah.


With my health in decline, my campaigning days are over, but  hopefully the DBEIS will continue and achieve a lot.

Related to the above, I used to be involved in qualification testing of various 'far east' supplied components used in the electronics industry. We often found that when testing was performed by the manufacturers/suppliers, they did this on 'cherry picked' parts. When we repeated tests on random samples, the majority failed the same tests!