Thread: Don't you hate it when some people know it all?

Originally Posted by drivesafe

Hi again Phillip and mate, be adventurous, but please don’t use that clown’s “expert advice” as any sort of guidance for what you are planning.


Also, not sure why your lead acid battery only charged to 80% but is more likely a problem with your original setup.

Even if this was the case, you will quickly discover that if your lead acid battery was low when you started your drive to recharge it, that it would have reached that 80% charged state far quicker than you will get your lithium from a low state to 80%.


Something else to consider as well. Constant VOLTAGE charging ( by an alternator ) of a lead acid battery is a totally different form of charging to the constant CURRENT charging ( DC/DC, Solar and Battery Chargers ), you will be using on your lithium battery.


The constant VOLTAGE charging is why your lead acid battery would reach the 80% ( or higher in most other setups ) far quicker than your lithium can.


The terminal voltage on your lithium battery will remain low until roughly the final 10 or so percentage of the charge cycle.

Hullo Drivesafe. I've been following this thread with interest. I'm not an expert, so I normally default to people like yourself, who actually know what they're talking about. To that end, what do you think about this product, which is a lithium starter battery. Developed in Western Australia.


Lithium Car Battery 12V Stop Start 1300CCA iTECH1420CA 60Ah | iTechworld

Also, not sure why your lead acid battery only charged to 80% but is more likely a problem with your original setup.

I didn't say that.
My LA battery is fully charged on day 1.
I usually pretty quickly place it on a solar panel.
Over the day it will remain pretty well charged and overnight drop down because of my old Engel fridge load.

The next morning it starts at say 12.2 then the solar panel quickly rises to 14.4 Volts, then drops charge to 1-2 amps and 13.4 volts.

This is less than the fridge demand so every time the fridge activates it goes back up to 14.4 volts and say 5 amps.

But this drops off at about 4PM so the fridge overnight draw draws it down to a bit below say 12 volts or 11.9.
And so on.
I appreciate an AGM would probably fully charge quicker and as I explained the LA was a cheap interim solution.

My setup is quite good with a supposedly 250 watt panel,( 1m by 1.1m) which seems to actually be about 150 watt and a GSL 12 amp MPPT controller which won a design award .Peak seen is about 8.5 -9 amps through a in line amp meter , but I don't let the battery get down too low so the achievable peak current may be actually more.

Up until now I have used a ABR controller which decouples at 12.4 volts but I have now replaced this with just an ignition controlled solenoid. There may have been some interaction between the Optima Blue top and the LA battery when charging which caused the LA to not fully charge as the AGM Optima is usually still connected when I attach the solar panel. This may have been the problem.

I have not had time to test my revised setup yet because of home isolation.

Both batteries are in good condition with the LA reading about 97AH and the Optima about 740CCA.
Regards PhilipA

Originally Posted by bob10

Hullo Drivesafe. I've been following this thread with interest. I'm not an expert, so I normally default to people like yourself, who actually know what they're talking about. To that end, what do you think about this product, which is a lithium starter battery. Developed in Western Australia.


Lithium Car Battery 12V Stop Start 1300CCA iTECH1420CA 60Ah | iTechworld

Hi Bob, and first off, I personally, would never use a lithium battery as a cranking battery.

Going on info coming out of Europe, there is a huge potential to frying your vehicles electronics, if the lithium battery’s BMS shuts down for any reason while the motor is running.

This is not something that can happen with a lead acid battery, even one that is stuffed.

Second, you need to do a search of that specific brand of products because they are renowned for falsifying specs for their products.

But it’s your call.

Hi Phillip and it sounds like a problem with your solar controller, where it is going into FLOAT mode too soon in the charge cycle.

If your battery was still drawing 1-2 amps in FLOAT mode, it would still have been drawing maximum solar amps if the regulator stayed in CHARGE mode.

Furthermore, if the solar regulator has user settings, then it should be set to 14.7v for maximum charge capability for a lead acid battery ( wet cell or AGM ).

Thanks mate I will check that out.
There is no adjustemnt on the GSL.
As I foolishly believed the panel was 250watts I bought a cheapo MPPT on ebay with a 15 amp capacity.
However it put out 1 amp less than the GSL under the same conditions..

Regards PhilipA

Be adventurous... ok...

First Thor manifold onto a 3.9, with a stroker kit, with a Supercharger, running Haltech Sequential EFI. Already did that

Multi battery configurations - yep, done that too.

Using newer tech for the sake of it is not being adventurous. Especially when the newer tech isn’t suitable to application. A strong discussion can be had using lighting as a topic.

Guess what we just went and did on our Heavy Haul fleet that runs 24/7 on our site?! Wired in heavy bypass looms and removed the LED lighting and went with Xenon Filament lighting.

Our drivers were suffering eye strain against the low contrast environment and several animal strikes were common per shift.

We’ve now pulled the low CRI lighting out, gone Xenon Filament and now - no eye strain, less animal strikes as the drivers say they can see them easier.

Newer isn’t always the correct solution.