Thread: How long could I leave my D4 without driving it

Originally Posted by drivesafe

Hi wboner and I hope you don’t mind if I answer a few questions, yours and for others.

To your use first.

Unfortunately a single good charge, just before you leave a vehicle unused for a long period, will fully charge the battery but is not going to do give you the long term charge holding condition you need.

A single long charge or the occasional long drive will not condition a battery and in the case of the occasional long drive, it has nothing to do with the alternator not being able to charge batteries properly.

Continuos short drives means the battery will loose charging capacity, but just a couple of short drives will have the same effect because all lead acid batteries, once discharged below about 75%, all lead acid batteries need to first be fully charged and then need a long conditioning or “SOAK” charge, to allow the battery to regain some of their lost capacity.

Note, SOAK charging only regains a small percentage of the lost capacity each time you carry out a SOAK charge cycle, and leaving the battery on a charger all the time does not help to regain lost capacity, it will just keep the battery at what ever level of capacity it was at when you connected the charger.

Each time you do a short drive, you fail to fully RECHARGE the cranking battery, and this leads to a small percentage of the battery not being charged at all, and over a period of time, this percentage of unchangeable battery capacity just increases.

While my dual battery setups can either stop this from occurring in the first place, or reduce the effect in many cases, my systems still can not totally makeup for not driving either long enough to fully charge the battery or for not driving frequently enough.

So wboner, if you are planning to leave a vehicle in an unused situation for a long period of time, for a week or so be for leaving the vehicle unused, give all the batteries a good long charge every night, if convenient.

Then, if you are only going to do this once every blue moon, disconnect each battery’s negative terminal.

If you are likely to be doing this on a regular basis, fit a small switch into the thin earth wire coming from my SC80 or pre 2014 USI-160 isolators and this will stop unnecessary energy wastage.

NOTE, all USI-160 isolator supplied since December last year, now have the new Time-Out feature, where the isolator automatically shuts down 72 hours after the motor was last run.

Hi GD-4 and if the batteries have not discharged down to 12.0v, you can use the Anderson plug at the rear bumper to recharge all your batteries.

But as other have posted above, if your cranking battery is flat, you need to charge via BATTERY circuit in the 12S socket ( white ).

I’m not a fan of leaving battery chargers permanently connected to batteries for long periods of time and the is a better alternative, where practical. This is to use a solar panel ( and reg ) charge and maintain the batteries. The very nature of how solar panels work means they turn on every morning and turn off every night.

This is a much better charging algorithm for lead acid batteries and over a period of time, will also keep the battery’s condition at maximum state of charge.

Hi Andrew and leaving lead acid batteries in an unused state any time longer than one month should not be considered as these batteries self discharge, some fairly quickly, like wet cell batteries and some take much longer, AGMs.

As above, a good fix is to use a solar panel to maintain the batteries over such a long period of time.

Drivesafe
Thanks for the reply.

I believe I got my Traxide set up earlier this year so it should have the timer you mentioned.

Would connecting your recharger to one of those wall timers work as well as the solar so that it runs 12 hours a day or once a week or something like that?

I am a bit confused. You say you need a SOAK charge. How do you do this?

Richard

I have the ctek charger plug wired to the positive on the main battery,negative to the body, as Tim describes,it just reaches out of the plastic battery cover.I have the traxide kit,so it charges both batteries.

I don't mind having the bonnet open as it warns whoever goes to use the car that the battery is on charge.

The only issue is the car will not lock if the bonnet is open,but is an easy fix if you bridge out the bonnet switch.

I put the car on charge every 2 weeks or so, as at times it gets very little use.

I also find that doing short trips seems to drop the charge of the main battery down quickly,and the SC80 will eventually do it;s job and isolate the two batteries.

In fact doing short trips probably reduces the batteries charge quicker than leaving the car sitting doing nothing.

FWIW,in my opinion,the situation with these batteries and charging systems is ridiculous,and as Tim has said,it is other manufacturers as well,not only LR that have these issues.

If they are designed for fuel economy,then how much fuel do they actually save?

Hi,'
Is there any reason you can not connect the lead to the negative battery post as is suggested in the CTEK diagrams.


Richard

Originally Posted by wbowner

Hi,'
Is there any reason you can not connect the lead to the negative battery post as is suggested in the CTEK diagrams.


Richard

Yeah. What difference does 6 inches of earth lead really make?

Originally Posted by wbowner

Hi,'
Is there any reason you can not connect the lead to the negative battery post as is suggested in the CTEK diagrams.


Richard

Yep,don't do it,there is something that will be damaged if you do this,on a D3/4.

Someone will chime in on exactly what it is.

Hi All

Many thanks for all your help

I think I have enough info to build a 12S connector to charge the batteries

GD-4

Originally Posted by scarry

Yep,don't do it,there is something that will be damaged if you do this,on a D3/4.

Someone will chime in on exactly what it is.

Just about to leave mine for 5 weeks, was going to leave my Ctek charger on it? Do I connect on the battery terminals or per when jump starting positive to positive connector, negative to a bolt/body (not the neg terminal)

Single battery not dual battery system.

Thanks

Originally Posted by JayBee75

Just about to leave mine for 5 weeks, was going to leave my Ctek charger on it? Do I connect on the battery terminals or per when jump starting positive to positive connector, negative to a bolt/body (not the neg terminal) Single battery not dual battery system. Thanks

If it were me, I would connect it.

Positive to positive on battery, and negative to on one of the two earth posts outside the battery box. Brett....