Thread: Aux battery sugestions

Originally Posted by Aaron IIA

C/T?

Camper trailer

Optima deep cycle batteries are one of the exceptions, where charging times are actually much quicker than cranking batteries, let alone ordinary deep cycle batteries.

Tank if you have an Optima Yellowtop in your CT, and it was not charging properly, then you must have a problem in your system or are using thin cabling.

You say it was $30/m then at that price, it should be something like 25mm2 ( or thicker ) and if it is, you should have been able to charge that Optima from dead flat to fully charged in 1 hour straight off your alternator.

Again, there seems to be something very wrong with your setup

Originally Posted by drivesafe

Optima deep cycle batteries are one of the exceptions, where charging times are actually much quicker than cranking batteries, let alone ordinary deep cycle batteries.

Tank if you have an Optima Yellowtop in your CT, and it was not charging properly, then you must have a problem in your system or are using thin cabling.

You say it was $30/m then at that price, it should be something like 25mm2 ( or thicker ) and if it is, you should have been able to charge that Optima from dead flat to fully charged in 1 hour straight off your alternator.

Again, there seems to be something very wrong with your setup

Tim, no there is not a problem with the Optima yellow tops (2) in the C/T, the problems were with the Supercharge Deep Cycle in the Disco as the Aux. battery, by the time I'd get home after a few days camping the Redarc system (100 amp.) didn't have enough time to bring the Aux. battery up to full charge, maybe also due to the fact that the battery was down to low volts.
So I setup a C-Tek DC to DC charger to soley charge the Aux. and had no more problems. I now have transferred the C-Tek to the C/T to charge the 2 Optima yellow tops and have a large standard cranking battery in it's place in the Disco as the Aux., I do bush recoveries of broken down or bogged 4WD's which is usually at night and requires a fair bit of winching, last recovery lasted 17 hours non-stop.
I will post up a pic of my C/T setup in the large front tool box, you may notice there is positive wire not connected, that is for a fuse panel inside the C/T that runs the water pump and lights and a couple of accessory Cigarette lighter plugs, you may notice that some of the soldered joints on the connectors have got that green gunk on them, what causes this and how do I stop this happening, thanks for your info, Regards Frank.

Hi Frank,
Something must have been wrong with your old set up if the alt couldnt charge the aux battery then just putting a DCDC charger in should have made it worse as the use more power than they put out. Was your old aux battery holding any charge or dropping votltage as soon as the engine stopped

Originally Posted by THE BOOGER

Hi Frank,
Something must have been wrong with your old set up if the alt couldnt charge the aux battery then just putting a DCDC charger in should have made it worse as the use more power than they put out. Was your old aux battery holding any charge or dropping votltage as soon as the engine stopped

This has been said a few times now
Im thinking something is going missing in translation along the way somewhere

Originally Posted by THE BOOGER

Hi Frank,
Something must have been wrong with your old set up if the alt couldnt charge the aux battery then just putting a DCDC charger in should have made it worse as the use more power than they put out. Was your old aux battery holding any charge or dropping votltage as soon as the engine stopped

I can't see your logic in saying that the DC/DC charger uses more power than it out puts, when the C/T is connected to the Disco the input from the Disco main battery to the DC/DC charger is 12.8V, the charge out of the DC/DC charger is 13.8+V. measured at the batteries.
Why would companies like C_TEK and Redarc et al produce a Battery charger that doesn't charge a battery as you're suggesting.
Going back pre DC/DC charger fitment in the Disco.
The problem was the fact that the heavy use that I put the main starter battery through meant that the Dual battery system (Redarc) was directing flow to the main battery most of the time to get it to the level where it would switch over (12.7V. to 12.8V.) to charge the Aux deep cycle battery which ran the Engel fridge and a couple of aux. sockets.
All of the slow driving, numerous stops and starts and winching kept the main starter battery below fully charged, so the only real charging the aux. battery got was on the way home. As I said previously the Engel would drag the the deep cycle battery down to 7V. as there was no low voltage cut out on this fridge, the aux battery would be around 12V by the time I got home and eventually dropped a cell due to dragging the volts so low. Hope this clears it up, BTW how are you and the boy, haven't seen you down this way for a while, last time was at John's place at the Aulro 10th., Regards Frank.

Originally Posted by Tank

I can't see your logic in saying that the DC/DC charger uses more power than it out puts, when the C/T is connected to the Disco the input from the Disco main battery to the DC/DC charger is 12.8V, the charge out of the DC/DC charger is 13.8+V. measured at the batteries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor

Nothing is 100% efficient. Voltage is just half of what you're seeing.

Dbl post