Thread: Auxiliary battery.

I personally like the idea of an extra rear mounted 'engel' battery I bring in when I gear up for a trip as I will never permanently be set up in camp mode. I'm interested to know how the charging wiring works for this.

Hi PerthDisco, these are just like most of the battery boxes available.


If you are only going to need them once in a blue moon, for a weekend away then they will be fine.


If you are planning a long trip and want to recharge the battery while driving, then you still need to install a dual battery isolator and to run heavy cabling to the battery box’s Anderson Plug.


Because if you try to use the builtin DC/DC charger and you have say a 120Ah battery in a low state, you will need to drive for nearly 20 hours straight, to recharge the battery. Not really very practical.


As above, for a weekend trip away, where you don’t need to recharge the battery till you get home, fine. But for just about anything else, a dual battery setup would be cheaper, more effective, and a lot easier on your back.

Originally Posted by drivesafe

Hi PerthDisco, these are just like most of the battery boxes available.


If you are only going to need them once in a blue moon, for a weekend away then they will be fine.


If you are planning a long trip and want to recharge the battery while driving, then you still need to install a dual battery isolator and to run heavy cabling to the battery box’s Anderson Plug.


Because if you try to use the builtin DC/DC charger and you have say a 120Ah battery in a low state, you will need to drive for nearly 20 hours straight, to recharge the battery. Not really very practical.


As above, for a weekend trip away, where you don’t need to recharge the battery till you get home, fine. But for just about anything else, a dual battery setup would be cheaper, more effective, and a lot easier on your back.

The one we had installed in Broom runs via your Isolator Tim, it's connected inline with the 2nd battery, not ideal being two different types of batteries, but it got us out of trouble.

Hi RED and because my isolators exploit how an alternator works, you should not have any problems charging mixed battery types at the same time.


I think this might be another subject to cover in my AUTO-ELECTRIC thread.

Originally Posted by PerthDisco

I personally like the idea of an extra rear mounted 'engel' battery I bring in when I gear up for a trip as I will never permanently be set up in camp mode. I'm interested to know how the charging wiring works for this.

I have run some wiring from the battery to the rear of my D2a (Fused both ends) to an Anderson plug.
I just hook into this rear plug and I charge the rear batteries directly via the alternator from this rear power outlet when I am travelling and it is usually good for a couple of days when parked up But I always disconnect the batteries from the rear plug when stopped.

When I am staying for a few days I deploy my solar panels unplug from the rear Anderson plug and hook the solar directly to the rear batteries,
This setup easily runs 2 x 12v fridges and solar lighting as well.
Using the K.I.S.S. principle here

Hope it's OK to add my question to this thread.

I just figured out that the 2010 D4 I recently acquired has a Redarc SBI12 aux battery isolator and a nice fat wire running under the passenger side of the car to an external Anderson plug near the tow hitch. That's totally perfect for my compressor, so yay.

However I also want to install a new UHF radio and have to figure out whether to run it (a) permanently from the cranking battery and remember to turn it off, (b) from the cranking battery but linked to the accessory power switch, or (c) from an actual aux battery.

There's also the consideration of a fridge for short-ish camping trips which I am interested in but not yet committed to.

The Redarc is installed right in front of my cranking battery, taking up some of the space where smaller aux batteries can be squeezed.

So questions...
Do I go with option A, B or C for my UHF?
If C, which battery, where to install, what other changes to make?

Originally Posted by TB

Hope it's OK to add my question to this thread.

I just figured out that the 2010 D4 I recently acquired has a Redarc SBI12 aux battery isolator and a nice fat wire running under the passenger side of the car to an external Anderson plug near the tow hitch. That's totally perfect for my compressor, so yay.

However I also want to install a new UHF radio and have to figure out whether to run it (a) permanently from the cranking battery and remember to turn it off, (b) from the cranking battery but linked to the accessory power switch, or (c) from an actual aux battery.

There's also the consideration of a fridge for short-ish camping trips which I am interested in but not yet committed to.

The Redarc is installed right in front of my cranking battery, taking up some of the space where smaller aux batteries can be squeezed.

So questions...
Do I go with option A, B or C for my UHF?
If C, which battery, where to install, what other changes to make?

Hi TB,
If you don't feel like installing a second battery yet you could do option A and with most newish UHFs, they will have an Auto-off function (the ICom IC-450 definitely does) so you don't have to worry about turning it off... just a thought.
David

Given you have some cabling already in place I would go for a 2nd battery. I have my radio connected to the 2nd battery and leave it on all the time. I tell everyone I'm camping with to take a handheld radio with them if they wander off and if they get into trouble they can call up, anytime day or night.