Thread: Which CAT battery to choose?

Originally Posted by northiam

D2 does 10k kms/yr mostly short trips 5 to 30kms

Would have thought a so called quality battery would have lasted more than 3 months past the 3 year warranty.

Your journey lengths are killing it....Even a quality battery needs a good charge...

Some time on a charger once a month would see you right.

You can not do short runs and expect it to top back up in time...

A starter pulls up around 200amp to start the vehicle..
The average Lead-Acid battery charges at somewhere around 10-20ah

So you start at 100ah and wipe say 5a off which requires 15-20 min to replace..(driving not idling).

Then you repeat this to come home... etc

Eventually that poor battery is getting nothing but surface charges on each run...

Originally Posted by onebob

My CAT 15-2422 was installed in August 2012 and is still going strong - my alternator output is 14.1V max. Overcharging will kill a batterry - what is the charging output of your alternator?

onebob

I measured 14.3 volts at 2000 engine rpm 14.1v at idle
parasitic load was 360mA but reduced to 30mA after about 1 hour

My new battery will be AC Delco S31-901MF
ACDelco | Quality Automotive Products | Part Finder

or
http://www.rjbatt.com.au/wp-content/...or-31-1000.pdf

Get the cheapest of them - unless you change maintenance routine it will last about the same..

For the record the Cat battery I purchased for the D2 in 2006 is still going strong as a work bench power source after removing it from the D2 in 2010

The original Varta in our Defender lasted 9 years, but any battery hates short trips and needs regular runs of at least maybe an hour to stay healthy.

Sent from my A1601 using AULRO mobile app

The above batteries have indicator lights for condition enabling easy checks.
I know it only indicates one cell but it should help guage whats going on there.
The handle will be helpful too!

The heated electric seats wouldnt help in winter either with those short trips
The Delco 900cca will cost $215 inc

The posts are centred which was the same as battery prior to the Cat (without 9 lives). Pretty sure the original battery were centre posts?



Thanks to all.

Just FYI - Magic Eye charge indicators work on this...


Somewhere around 12.25v (65%) is still green

And a basic chart of cycle times
Note the closer to 50% SOC The life shortens to the equivalent of about 2 starts a day for 3 years