No Power (electrical).

Howdy,

I have done a search but haven't found much in the way of troubleshooting same with google. (my search terms are probably rubbish..)

Anyway, I have no electrical power in the landy. So the lights/horn etc dont work and no ignition etc. I thought that the (new) battery had discharged due to something draining it, but when I went to charge it, it said it was already charged. I did take the dash out to sort the speedo cable, and have probably knocked something out of place.. but it all "appears" to be ok. There are some crappy pictures here - Dash - Imgur

I went to maplins today and bought my first ever multimeter (the cheap £8 one..) but im not sure where to start poking it, or how to properly use it..

I am probably going to buy a brand new autosparks harness at some point, since the previous owners have spliced wires all over the shop, but I need to get it up and running for it's MOT (which has already expired) and the tax runs out in a month and I don't want to have to sorn it.

Can anyone help a newbie out with where to start? Electrical issues just turn my brain to mush.

look under the steering cowl shroud for a rectangle black box cover about the size of a swan vestas match box held on by 2 screws and undo it

there should be spaces for 5 glass fuses in there with 3 fuses in and 2 missing

i bet its one of these thats blown or just needs a wiggle from being disturbed or shorted out

Hi,

Thanks for that, I will have a look at the fuses!

I feel bad for only posting when I have an issue, but I don't have enough knowledge to contribute. :/

So it turns out that the new bosch silver battery is borked, the multimeter is only showing 2.7 volts. (I wish I had bought one sooner..), yet the charger says it is charged. I will take it back to halfords to complain! Landrover lights etc work with another battery, that I thought had died.. but is showing 12.6 volts.. :/ These electronics are funny things..

depends on the type of charger and battery

a lead acid charger sometimes wont give a true reading for a dry cell battery and vice versa

whereas a multimeter isnt biast to what type of battery is used

and it dont matter too much about contributing as in the beginning i didnt know enough to be able to advise neither
i learned a lot of it by reading through peoples restorations and build threads and asking questions here and there

Sounds to me more like your charger has buggered /undercharged your battery! (You did have the multimeter on DC volts?!?). Is it a proper car battery charger or is it a multi-purose one?

It is quite easy to ruin a car battery by leaving it undercharged...

as dominicbeesley asked (you did have the multimeter on DC volts) if on AC volts you would get a low reading hate you to storm in and complain only to eat humble pie. always pays if you get them to test it then complain if it's faulty

Most battery chargers won't show that a battery is fully charged, they'll only show that they've done the best that they can with the battery. So if the battery is only capable of holding 20% of it's power then the charger will show 'full' at that point.