Thread: start v deep cycle battery running engle - test

I have run a Waeco 80 litre off of a starting battery, but honestly not with much success. It worked great during the day whilst driving, and kept up quite easily. But when I stopped at night, it would drain the battery quite easily. (the battery is 830CCA).

After around 5 days on the road, I was waking up to a flat battery every morning - which gets really bloody annoying!

Personally, I would always recommend a deep cycle for running of accessories such as a fridge, whilst I recommend the opposite for winches!

Cheers
Chris

<span style="color:darkred">a "start" battery will run a fridge the same as deep cycle will....


the difference is....if you flatten a start battery a few times you will greatly
reduce its service life.....
whereas a deep cycle battery will take getting deep discharged more than a start battery....

but deep discharging will shorten the life of that too.....
you need to try and avoid sending batteries flat for them to last longer....

the idea of a second battery is only so if/when you send it flat....
you in theory still have a good battery to start the car with in the morning....

drivesafe will probably be able to explain this better than me....
(as i am hopeless with words).....



a tip is to turn down the fridges at night (or even turn them right off in cold weather)
to save power....they dont get opened at night (unless you sleep walk)
so they stay cold....


if you are drawing enough power to flatten a start battery....
chances are you will flatten your deep cycle battery if you had it connected instead....
but you just wont know about it as you wont try to run a starter motor off it in the morning....</span>

[quote=DEFENDERZOOK]

drivesafe will probably be able to explain this better than me....
(as i am hopeless with words).....

[/color]

dont be so hard on yourself,,
made perfect sense to me

[quote=Pedro_The_Swift]

Originally Posted by DEFENDERZOOK

drivesafe will probably be able to explain this better than me....
(as i am hopeless with words).....

[/color]

dont be so hard on yourself,,
made perfect sense to me

<span style="color:green">
takes one to understand one......</span>

Originally posted by cewilson
I have run a Waeco 80 litre off of a starting battery, but honestly not with much success. It worked great during the day whilst driving, and kept up quite easily. But when I stopped at night, it would drain the battery quite easily. (the battery is 830CCA).

After around 5 days on the road, I was waking up to a flat battery every morning - which gets really bloody annoying!

Personally, I would always recommend a deep cycle for running of accessories such as a fridge, whilst I recommend the opposite for winches!

Cheers
Chris

I have run our 40l Engel off our defender battery quite a few times without problems. I'm not sure if it is a deep cycle or not (it is what came with the car) but it has never looked like going flat. Something is fish here

Something puzzles me...

My Waeco has a cut off switch that can be set to one of three settings so than when the battery drops below the set limit the fridge will switch off.

So regardless of whether I have a deep cycle battery or a cranking battery I can never drain the battery below that limit. Therefore for me a deep cycle is not an option because I can never cycle the battery if the fridge is the only implement attached. I understand that DCB's need to be cycled for long life.

Am I reading this correctly?

Originally posted by one_iota

Am I reading this correctly?

<span style="color:darkblue">im not sure.....


a deep cycle battery is designed to accept a deeper rate of discharge....
compare to a normal battery.....and its not designed to run high current items...
such as starter motors and winches.....it is for lower current and for more hours......

lets say...for arguements sake....if you discharge a normal battery down to
9 volts regularly....it wont last long.....they need to be kept charged above 12 volts.....


if you do the same with a deep cycle.....it will last longer than a normal battery....
i dont mean will run the accessories for a longer period of time....
that is governed by the capacity of the battery...(AH)
i mean it will last for 2 or three years instead of 1 or less....</span>

an update - the fridge is set at 4 degrees

7:00am yesterday i started with 12.53V in the tank
8:00pm last night i had 12.32V - we had heavy cloud cover from 5pm on so the batteries should have been rested enough after taking charge from the solar panel all day
6:30am this morning 12.23V - i forgot to pick up some connectors yesterday therefore i could not connect the van up to the fender so that my two aux deep cycle batteries could lend a hand overnight. 0.09 of a volt drop sound s little low for a 10 hour period, i didn't disconnect the solar panel as it was in full shade therefore i wouldn't think would have an output.

will it last the five day test, i'm guessing not and as we have cloud cover today the solar panels output will be reduced a fare bit

if i get two to three days out of the setup i will be happy as it will reduce the amount of days i will have to have both fridges in the fender

i will probably put my new engle in the van for easter as it draws less current therefore longer life out of my makeshift van setup.