Wet Cell Battery Advice

[Rockylizard]

Gday...

Given all the auto elec 'discussion' on the forum over the past couple of days .... I just know there are plenty of 'advisers' to help me .

I have an aux battery - 50amp/hr - that came with the D3 when I bought it 2nd hand - all set up with all the proper 'management' gear. I find I frequently (probably four times in 9 months) need to top up cells in it.

My experience with batteries is that I have very rarely had to top up batteries with distilled water .... I check them at least fortnightly and they just always have had the required amount of water in the cells.

Main battery is fine and has required no topping up in the same time.

Interested in comments

Cheers
John

[Tombie]

I'm betting its a std battery, not a Calcium unit.

Best bet would be to replace with an Optima.

[Blknight.aus]

the loss of the water out of the acid in a battery is typically from overcharging or excessive draw.

check the charge voltage and the draw getting to the battery, if the battery has been contaminated or internally damaged it will occur more quickly.

[Owl]

Hi John,
Here is a disadvantage of mixing battery types in your charging system. The standard AGM and/or Calcium starting battery will be charged from the alternator at ~14.7V. The flooded wet cell deep cycle battery requires to be charged at significantly lower voltage - typically 14.2V. The overcharging tends to boil off the water in the electrolyte significantly faster than normally expected.

There is likely to be some shortening of the battery life but this can be minimised so long as you keep up with the distilled water replacement. Ideally you should replace the battery with an AGM type when replacement is required.

Ian

[drivesafe]

Hi Owl and sorry mate but you have that back to front.

Flooded wet cell battery and this includes most Calcium/Calcium batteries, will tolerate 14.7v as a continuous voltage, but will, as I suspect is the case with Johns battery, need to be topped up regularly.

Standard AGMs must never have continuous voltages of 14.7v applied to them especially if they are in an engine bay. 14.4v is the absolute maximum voltage a standard AGM can tolerate and even this is at room temperatures.

We need some more info John. Can you tell us the name of the battery management system and how it is wired up, because the normal operations in a D3 will not gas a battery as much as your battery is gassing.

[Rockylizard]

Gday...

The following is the configuration of the batteries in my 2006 TDV6 SE D3.

Main battery – Land Rover – Varta – Made in Germany (I assume original battery)
The label states: 12V 90Ah, RC150 mins, 950 Amps (SAE). Screw access to cells to check water.

Aux battery – Besco Made in Australia (no idea how old but could be 5 years)
The label states: 50Ah 20hr capacity – Ideal for dual battery use (it also has a label showing a boat, 4x4, caravan, trailer)
Screw access to cells to check water

The main and aux batteries are “managed” by a Piranah DBE 150S Mk 2 12V 150amp Dual Management System.

This is all I can determine from reading the outside of the batteries and management system. Anything else is ‘smoke and mirrors’ to me – sorry

I also had the alternator replaced about 5 months ago – apparently it was only putting out 13.1v and that was causing the ECU to bring up the ‘charging system’ fault light on the dash. At that time both batteries were ‘fully charged’ – main at 13.8v and aux at 13.2v – tested by RACV who attended my initial call before I went to Dealer.

I had the batteries checked again only two weeks ago and both were holding full charge and were receiving 14.7v at main, 14.3v at aux and 14.1v at my caravan ‘house’ battery.

I hope this helps to provide some advice perhaps.

Cheers
John