D1 300tdi, 24 hrs after 200k run. Traxide-160. Optima red starter, 12.22v optima yellow au, 12.22v both batteries are new (2months old)
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D1 300tdi, 24 hrs after 200k run. Traxide-160. Optima red starter, 12.22v optima yellow au, 12.22v both batteries are new (2months old)
Something not right here. A fully charged battery should have 12.7 voltsQuote:
Originally Posted by Petetheprinta
I had two out of the eight I posted with 12.1 and 12.3, both less than 6 months old.
And now you have two that are low.
I wondered about that, just after a run they are about 12.5v, but go down very rapidly. If I don't use for a few days they go down even lower. My starter battery goes lower than aux, which I sort of assume can't be right. I talked to Tim and he said to flick the traxide switch but that made no difference. My aftermarket voltmeter shows charging at about 14.2 volts so I assume alternators working alright. Any suggestions what I should look at??Quote:
Originally Posted by d2dave
i have 3 batteries here that are not in a car. (not sure if this is useful to you)
all 3 of them charged about 5 days ago
2 d34's: both at 12.36 volts
1 x-pack: 12.65 volts
I have just tried to do a amp draw test. I disconnected aux battery and removed neg cable from starter battery. I attached multimeter and it showed .54 for 2 secs then steady on .04 (amps I assume) I removed fuses and redid tests. The only fuse to make a difference was no 6 fuse in satellite 2, which seems to be AUX with a diagram of trailer there. I had a constant read of .06 when it was removed. Should this mean anything to me or should I keep looking??. Interestingly since disconnecting battery the volts have INCREASED slightly. Is that significant??
That can be a bit of a concern.Quote:
Originally Posted by Petetheprinta
For the voltage to rise after you disconnected the batteries usually means you had a more than minimal load on the batteries while they were connected.
Tell us a bit more about how much the voltage rose and some more details about your setup!
As best as I can, I have a red top starter and a yellow top aux. Both new. They are connected via a USI-160 as per your supplied instructions. The starter does all the normal things and the Aux runs power to the back, spotlights, etc. Vehicle? Has no electronics. So only thing drawing power is radio, red alarm led and your traxide thingy with its yellow led. Both batteries charge well at about 14.2v. When I switch off volts drop continuously on both batteries. Down to 12.2 within 24 hours. I removed aux battery by disconnecting earth wire and fuse to it (removing it from system) and starter battery increased volts to 12.35v I then used Ctek charger on main and got 12.7 volts. 24 hrs later 12.65 v. I then did the same with aux battery and it holds voltage It appears that traxide or aux battery is running the system down. I am not knowledgable in electrics but that is what's happening. Batteries by themselves ok. Introduce traxide, they run down??
Hi Again Peter and I’ll take a guess here and say you have a 75Ah cranking battery and a 55Ah auxiliary battery.
If this is the case then you have other factors to be taken into consideration.
For those batteries to loose 40% of their capacity in 24 hours, they would need to have a constant load of at least 4 amps.
This is because “if” the batteries were in a good state of charge, meaning at their maximum capacity, not just fully charged, you would need to use more than 50 amperes of capacity to get them down to 12.2v ( 60% SoC ).
My USI-160 isolator draws less than 0.15A or less than 150 milliamps and at that current draw, it should take around 14 days to discharge your batteries down to 12.2v and this is normally the case, not 24 hours.
Lets see if we can sort this out for you.
What sort of driving are you doing?
Also, have you measured the voltage after 48 hours. I suspect you will still have 12.2v in the batteries.
This then would be their settled voltage and would indicate they need the charge cycling I posted about earlier.
Tim. I have just crunched some number in the calculator and at 150 milliamps I equated this to about 4 amps per day.Quote:
Originally Posted by drivesafe
Have I got this correct?
Close enough, 3.75 amps and this would be on the high side because the USI-160, in SHEARED mode draws about 0.13 amps but I like to be on the caution side when calculating energy consumption.Quote:
Originally Posted by d2dave