Thread: Meet my 90, and share the adventure.

Toxic Avenger wrote:


Removable Aux power
I'm toying with the idea of a portable battery for camping- a larger capacity and physical size true deep cell with its own charging relay and anderson style connection - think of it as a 'plug and play' battery for extended stays. Still in the hair-brain planning stages, but well and truly possible if I plan for it now. There would be possibility for AC-DC charging as well... being able to plug into 240V would be good for extended stays, but again, space and where I'd put this item is up in the air (not an IP rated device, so needs to be high and dry).


I just use an Ark box for this - it can be plugged into the vehicle and also into 240 volts. A simple solution.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

I just use an Ark box for this - it can be plugged into the vehicle and also into 240 volts. A simple solution.

Cheers Mick, I didn't even know something like this was available! What a top bit of gear.

Love it.
Spent 7 years in Tamworth so quite familiar with Manilla.
Might have to swing by and say G'day next time I visit

Originally Posted by Disco Muppet

Love it.
Spent 7 years in Tamworth so quite familiar with Manilla.
Might have to swing by and say G'day next time I visit

Would be great to catch up if you are ever in the neighborhood.

While in New Zealand, I saw a great ad on telly for drink driving.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtWirGxV7Q8[/ame]

Today's adventure was similar- I've been internalizing an incredibly complex situation in my head. Cue Puzzle Time!


I'm hoping to fit 2x group 34 size batteries in the battery box, along with a class T fuse holder for the winch, a Remote Battery Switch, and an Automatic Charging Relay. It's going to be a tight fit, so I spent some time with the tape measure and a notepad, and got to work. I'm no Picasso, but it made sense to me at the time.



Anyone that's looked at the defender battery box knows it's a weird shape. the base is flat (relative to the chassis). The front face which adjoins the footwell is raked back, and the top section, which the seats affix to, falls aft (or was that daft?...).
Inside, the body panels are no better. The panel which adjoins the transmission tunnel has a bulging section which pinches in towards the rear of the vehicle. The front of the cavity has a spot welded box section for strengthening. the base is on LSD- flat closest to the trans tunnel, a depressed section where the factory behemoth of a battery lives, and a angled surface closest to the door which takes up a fair bit of space (but presumably is there to allow it to clear the chassis).
Needless to say, I've decided to forego designing something myself to fit batteries into such hostile terrain.

Once I got back to the comfort of the study, I drew a scaled Plan view image of the battery box, to see how I could Tetris everything together. Tetris is not a verb, but it is a fitting one in this instance. Each 5mm square on paper is 25mm in the battery box.




The battery of choice is a BCI Group 34 unit - namely a optima D34M - a dual purpose AGM battery with 750 CCA, and 55Ah. Terminals in this setup are both SAE posts, and 5/16" threaded stainless studs.
This leads to the next item in the puzzle- scaled post-it note batteries.


Interestingly, 2 optimas side by side are approx the same length as the stock battery (stock battery tray is denoted by the dotted line in the plan).

Option 1 for the ACR / RBS units is thus:


Which was soon re-jigged to this:


I'm hoping to get the RBS output closer to the fuse holder which will be mounted on the front wall of the box. I'm hoping to wing it a bit with this... not sure if I'll mount it horizontally as shown, or vertically.

With this arrangement, there should be enough room to slide the front-most battery towards the trans tunnel to get it out of the box without hitting anything, while still allowing grommets to be installed for cabling thru to the trans tunnel. Then the rear-most battery can be slid across should it need removal.

Finally,
I've come to the conclusion that the standard battery post clamps on the pumas are a load of crap, probably designed by the Earl of Nonsense at Solihull.
They use a nut which has an inverted cone to clamp down on a male cone which pinches on the terminal. Even swinging off it with a good size spanner, it's still loose. I think I'll have them changed before too long. Might also look at re-doing that factory mega fuse holder which will probably not work with the new batteries.

Well that's about all for now...

Until next time,
Cheerio.

Originally Posted by Toxic_Avenger

I'm hoping to fit 2x group 34 size batteries in the battery box, along with a class T fuse holder for the winch, a Remote Battery Switch, and an Automatic Charging Relay. It's going to be a tight fit, so I spent some time with the tape measure and a notepad, and got to work. I'm no Picasso, but it made sense to me at the time.

Anyone that's looked at the defender battery box knows it's a weird shape. the base is flat (relative to the chassis). The front face which adjoins the footwell is raked back, and the top section, which the seats affix to, falls aft (or was that daft?...).
Inside, the body panels are no better. The panel which adjoins the transmission tunnel has a bulging section which pinches in towards the rear of the vehicle. The front of the cavity has a spot welded box section for strengthening. the base is on LSD- flat closest to the trans tunnel, a depressed section where the factory behemoth of a battery lives, and a angled surface closest to the door which takes up a fair bit of space (but presumably is there to allow it to clear the chassis).
Needless to say, I've decided to forego designing something myself to fit batteries into such hostile terrain.

Once I got back to the comfort of the study, I drew a scaled Plan view image of the battery box, to see how I could Tetris everything together. Tetris is not a verb, but it is a fitting one in this instance. Each 5mm square on paper is 25mm in the battery box.

The battery of choice is a BCI Group 34 unit - namely a optima D34M - a dual purpose AGM battery with 750 CCA, and 55Ah. Terminals in this setup are both SAE posts, and 5/16" threaded stainless studs.
This leads to the next item in the puzzle- scaled post-it note batteries.

Interestingly, 2 optimas side by side are approx the same length as the stock battery (stock battery tray is denoted by the dotted line in the plan).

Option 1 for the ACR / RBS units is thus:

I'm hoping to get the RBS output closer to the fuse holder which will be mounted on the front wall of the box. I'm hoping to wing it a bit with this... not sure if I'll mount it horizontally as shown, or vertically.

With this arrangement, there should be enough room to slide the front-most battery towards the trans tunnel to get it out of the box without hitting anything, while still allowing grommets to be installed for cabling thru to the trans tunnel. Then the rear-most battery can be slid across should it need removal.

Finally,
I've come to the conclusion that the standard battery post clamps on the pumas are a load of crap, probably designed by the Earl of Nonsense at Solihull.
They use a nut which has an inverted cone to clamp down on a male cone which pinches on the terminal. Even swinging off it with a good size spanner, it's still loose. I think I'll have them changed before too long. Might also look at re-doing that factory mega fuse holder which will probably not work with the new batteries.

Well that's about all for now...

Until next time,
Cheerio.

I came to the same conclusion regarding the battery terminals. After taking them off once I couldn't get them back on with a tight fit. So they came off.

The factory megafuse doesn't fit on the yellow tops so I put a piece of thin wood along the front of the battery box and screwed it onto that. I source the megafuse holder from Jaycar as they were the only ones that sold one that fitted the Ford factory megafuse. The ANL fuse holders require a different fuse and we couldn't find anyone that could supply a 500amp fuse.

By putting the car battery at the back and the auxiliary at the front it was easier to get both terminals on where i positioned the megafuse.

You're doing better than me - maybe I'm visually challenged. I looked at the battery box and decided not to even try to put a second battery in there. I did get the Traxide unit and some other stuff in.
Best I'm hoping to do is to get a fuse block in there to tidy it all up.
My second battery is going in the back, hopefully in the drawers.

A great resource for me was the humble Google image search for 'defender dual battery'.
There is a large number of options out there from the good old block of wood and a ratchet strap thru to more exotic solutions with dynamat and other tomfoolery.
It did also point out the shortcomings of some systems that I saw. Namely how space is utilized and different batteries are restrained. The flat dog kit actually has a lot of space between batteries which could have mixed results depending on your application.

My main concern is space for accessories and keeping the terminals out of harms way- ie away from the battery box lid.