Thread: What happened to your Discovery 2 today?

Let's try.

One attached to top of battery at the edge to the turbo. One is inside down at the custom wall box between turbo and battery.

Originally Posted by admiralranga

It'd be fairly easy to stick a temperature sensor next to the battery for a few drives, be curious to get an actual answer on how hot.

Ok. First photo is when I start. 2nd photo is ASAP when I stop.

After 28 minutes driving in aggressive style with most of 2nd and 3rd gears with no more than 4th gear around the hills in my area, and in after work traffic in Sydney, with air conditioner on 19 oC cold air inside, ambient temp is 20 oC, that's 2nd photo the highest temp I could get.

Max at the inner side wall next to the turbo: 41 oC.

Max at the top of the battery at the edge closest to the turbo: 54.1 oC.

I kept some other photos to understand those 2 numbers are always around 10-15 oC different.

I tested before those little temp sensor was only 0.5 - 1 oC different to real temp which we can trust them.

So far not bad.

Now run it in Summer, off road, at 40km/h

Radiant heat will be the end of it.

At the moment the battery is acting as a heat Sink

My 2c on the firewall battery install:

There's a reason that car manufacturers place batteries in specific areas of the engine bay, with shrouds and stuff and more usually at the front where it can be cooled a little more than at the rear.
So if you planned to keep it there, I'd try to use some form of fresh air ducting.

Every 10°C temp above ideal at the battery will reduce it's life by about 50% or so.
My memory isn't so good all the time, but I think it's something like that.
Ideal temps for lead batteries is about 20-25°C, any more and you're reducing it's efficiency.

For more battery capacity there are plenty of dual battery tray mods done where the single main is replaced by twins(up front) .. what we did to brothers, and there's a member here(can't recall name, sorry) that had some tray design that looked really nice, and I would have got from brothers TD5 to save myself a ton of welding up his dual tray.
Then place another aux down back(bro uses a battery box, so removable) .. and you still get you're extra 100Ahr capacity from an aux battery. Only downside is that you lose the 100A/hr capacity of the starter battery, but no biggie so far in bros TD5.

The other concern I'd have is the bee's knacker clearance between the battery box at the firewall and the turbo housing. Not really a lot of room by the looks of it for the engine to vibrate around, and hopefully you don't get a LHS engine mount failure at any point.

Like Tombie implied, you wouldn't want to run it there over summer.

Just to give a small idea of the temps you can expect in that area: Brother's TD5 has an ARB compressor installed there(that's how the car came). Summer 2019 we were up high country way, average temps in the mid 20's, doing not overly hard tracks, but slower than Tombies 40k/h scenario for a few hours on end. My stupid tyres kept going down(bloody Yokohamas!!) .. anyhow I was too lazy to get my portable compressor out and set up so we used bors already to go ARB on board, click the hose in and easy air .. for a half a sec or so. Try again, another half a sec.
Had we tried to fill my tyres back to mid 20's again using his ARB installed near the turbo(about 200mm away actually), we'd still be there filling my tyres up 0.5psi every 2-3 sec or so.
We first thought it was a major issue with his compressor, but once back at camp and car cooled, the compressor filled my now flat tyres again(2 of .. did I say bloody Yokohama tyres already!! ) no worries. Obviously the turbo + heat build upo in the engine bay forced the compressor to shut itself down.
My piddly little 15+ year old no name ebay cheapo compressor ran for a full 10 or so minutes trying to fill my bloody Yokohama tyres, no problems.

So don't dismiss the comments re heat build up in that area!

Originally Posted by Bohica

....

BTW. You do not use a 12 pointed socket with an impact wrench. Just putting this out there.

Oopsie alright, if said 12 point socket is used on a hex nut(or bolt) .. I think on the D2 uses bolts for the diff.
No problem using 12 point sockets on 12 point fixing heads with an impact gun tho .
Do it all the time on my brakes(D1). Bit of a PITA to break them off with a bar, so the impact wrench and gun come out to save me some knuckle skin .. only to lose it elsewhere of course! But this is always an ongoing battle with a Landrover.

The engineers designed them just right, so that skin is lost wherever any maniacal .. oops! I meant mechanical ... removal and/or fitment of parts is necessitated by hand.
OTOH tho, they also ensured that those same parts that require the removal of skin to accomplish, also fall off of their own accord without any hand ever coming close to them.

Anyhow .. what happened to my D2 recently .. err, this is the same D2 that used to be my brothers, but has recently been rechristened 'mine' .. it took brother(former owner), and myself(current owner) ... took us camping for a few days .. after the alternator bracket failure of last week, but saw fit to highlight the common passengers window roller issue at the most inopportune moment. Easy fix .. duct tape the switch for the weekend. Long term fix .. fix it!

Thanks for posting the temps, that's a fair bit cooler than expected. I've seen the dual D34 trays but seems the main advantage is twin batteries not capacity as it seems 2 D34s are the same as a decent group 31 (and twice the price)

Originally Posted by Eevo

less common than a td5 head moving

Debatable, and a set of bolts, steel dowels and a head gasket and you're good for another 1/2 million km at least

@AK83 and others: yeah mates, I appreciate all ideas, that's why I said above that the 2nd version will be done soon.

Btw, today more tests for 2 questions:

1- what temp at main battery when closed cover.
2-what temp when opened cover.

1 sensor on top battery close to the engine area. Another sensor down between tray wall and battery close to the engine area.

I had good trips 30kms each way with both local and highway along M5. Air conditioner on at 19 oC. Ambient temp was 16-17.

Results:

1- Closed cover: Min record was 17 and 18 on M5 at 100kmh.
Max was 33 and 35 at some traffic lights, most of the time was under 30.

Worst was when I stopped driving, then it goes up to about 35 and 39 for about 15 minutes before cooling down.

2- Opened cover: Min was 19 and 20 on M5 at 100kmh.
Max was 33 and 30 at some traffic lights.*

It seems opened cover is better for my local drive, and only 2 degree different on the highway.

I am thinking of a couple of computer fans on the front wall with a time delay relay.

This is in context of a Lifepo4 in the original space.
looks like I might have to get a longer delay. Have a 5 minute one on order for months from China.
Regards Philipa