Thread: P38A Dual Battery

Probably not a good idea, you could fit one in the back within one of those plastic boxes especially built for that purpose, or, as some I know just buy a good "Power Tank" and have it hooked up to the 12V socket.

For camping or winching?

For camping, the oddessies will be just fine. You can often fit two of these on the wet cell's tray. I did with my disco.

Twice the price, but thy should last more than twice as long. Compact, mount any way except upside down, good shelf life etc etc. Allegedly designed for choppers in the gulf war ala George Bush Mark 1. The choppers that sit around for weeks & months, but need instant cranking grunt whenever. Supposed to have 80% charge still after 6 mths on the shelf.

Great battery, but winching kills them in my experience. I've got them in two other cars, but not the LandRover.

Regards
Max P

OK, I've bought an AGM battery for the Rangie's second battery. The question now arises of where to fit it. It won't fit under the bonnet - unless I go to coil springs and get rid of the compressor and the EAS valve block.

The logical place is to fit it in the rear compartment hard up on the RHS where I currently have this storage box:



or in the wheel well (after removing the jack and foam carrier and stuff) where this bloke has his:

.

I'm leaning toward the latter because I am fitting drawers in the back and access to the under floor area will be restricted.

I have made up a new floor with an access hatch which will allow some access but not that good.



The problem is that the wheel well is also filled with the LPG tank:



so I am a bit leery of fitting a battery there. I thought about putting in a full height plywood wall between the battery and the tank so that they can never meet. Acid shouldn't be a problem as the battery is a sealed AGM unit.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Ron

When Trivetts fitted additional batteries in the Calvert Expedition RRs in 1996(?), they fitted them into the N/S/R 1/4. I think the subwoofer lives above the CD player so that would have been removed.
At least one of the RRs had 2 batteries stacked in the 1/4.

Ahh, the opposite side to my orange box (we used to use the boxes for tranporting mag tapes from the telex exchange to the data processing centre).

I want to keep the sub-woofer and CD stacker at the moment. I'll get rid of the stacker if I eventually modify the sound system to take a direct feed from an MP3 player.

Thanks, Scott.

Ron

At last I've finally fitted the second battery and one of Drivesafe's SC40 dual battery controllers. Thanks, Tim. It's charging a treat.

I put the battery where the jack used to fit - beside the LPG tank but with a plywood wall between them.

I'm dropping about 0.5 volt between the control unit (at the front of the car next to the main battery) and the AGM in the back - that's at a charge current of 10 amps.

I haven't yet run a parallel negative wire from the front to the back. I'm still using the body as the earth return.

Now my drawers can be refitted and the fridge installed. I picked up a second-hand commercial fridge slide (in excellent condition) for the Engel for $100 delivered. A top buy - I couldn't have made it for that. Someone asked about a second-hand slide on the Overlander forum and I also said I was looking for one. We both got one.

Pics to follow.

Ron

Hi Ron, what size cable have run.

I do not recommend ever using the chassis/body for the earth return but before you do anything, just try running a length of heavy gauge cable between the two battery’s negative terminals.

If there is no improvement in the voltage drop then I would recommend running either new heavier cable for both positive and negative or run a new positive cable parallel to the existing positive and a negative cable at the same time.

Cheers.