Thread: What brand of battery is the best?

From the little I know about batteries,,
your reply doesnt read right,,
lumping lead acid and AGM together only confuses the issue,, a calcium battery is designed to be charged at those volts so will be the same regardless of being sealed or not.

search function??
who'd a thunk,,

Originally Posted by Red Baron

What Buzz66 says re. maintenance free types tallies with what I had discovered after researching which battery to run as an aux on my D2. Basically, a lead acid (wet) type will tolerate the high charge voltages, because even when they start to "gas" and you lose electrolyte, at least you can top them up again. With a maintenance free type or AGM or similar, once they gas up a bit and you lose electrolyte, they're effectively stuffed. There are quite a few useful threads on here if you employ the search function....Chris.

Every mine site I've ever worked one uses maintenance free batteries,why because they are the best. Pat

Well this is a timely thread

I've been trying to understand what's going on with my battery in the D2a and it's quite interesting

From what I've managed to glean from various sources, the motor industry has moved to calcium batteries for a variety of reasons, the primary ones of which seem to be:
a low self discharge rate which means they can ship the cars and the batteries will still be full-ish on arrival
a low rate of outgassing when charged at close to normal voltages - this is important if you want a maintenance free battery because = low electrolyte loss

I recently discussed charging a lead-calcium battery with a supplier of battery chargers and their view was that to charge these batteries to full capacity required higher voltages - say close to 14.6 - 14.7V and if you search around the LR forums you'll see many references to the higher charging voltages of modern LRs to accommodate these batteries and the risk of frying "normal" batteries.
Well my D2a charges at 14.45 max, and generally only for a relatively short time and I don't think this is particularly high (my boat is about the same) - I reckon this keeps the battery at around 80% and I don't think this would fry a "normal" battery. I think it's more aimed at accommodating the maintenance free nature of the calcium batteries. I think the possible effect of this is a reduced life-span of the battery (most don't like being operated at lower than maximum charge capacities) - I seem to get 3 years max. I've also noticed that right from day one my battery would be around 12.3 +/- 0.1V every morning, significantly less than fully charged.

I'm wondering if anyone has tried a non-calcium battery as the primary one and how that went?

Just some rambling thoughts

cheers, Andy

We have had a pair of AGM batteries in our Disco for years. One battery lasted 8 years until it required replacing and the other lasted 7 years (I suspect a reduced life due to the heat off the turbo)

The batteries were frequently discharged in a camping situation. We rotate which battery is used as the engine start and which is the auxilliary. We now do the same in our Defender. We have never adjusted alternator voltage outputs.

The set-up was configured as either being the main battery and most times both were connected in parallel. This gave us the maximum power for winching situations.

Erich.

Re-Pedro.

The Red Baron describes the why perfectly.

Andy,

You asked "I'm wondering if anyone has tried a non-calcium battery as the primary one and how that went?"

I have a car sized lead acid battery in my 99 D2 V8, not because I wanted it but I needed a battery in a hurry (CCA had collapsed suddenly) and that is what the auto electrician had. It is not a low maintenance type, but has screw in plugs for each cell. It works fine so far (about a year so far including Canberra winter.) If I didn't have the aux battery I probably would not trust it, but I do so I have left it for now.

There has been a suggestion on this site that the high voltage of the Disco charge system will fry it, but there is no sign of that. In fact, it typically charges at only 13.9 to 14 volts, which is not enough to get my aux battery fully charged (or as well charged as the C-Tek charger gets it).

Don't know if that is useful or not but that is my experience.

Originally Posted by AndyRevill

...
I recently discussed charging a lead-calcium battery with a supplier of battery chargers and their view was that to charge these batteries to full capacity required higher voltages - say close to 14.6 - 14.7V ...
...
Well my D2a charges at 14.45 max, and generally only for a relatively short time and I don't think this is particularly high (my boat is about the same) - I reckon this keeps the battery at around 80% and I don't think this would fry a "normal" battery.
cheers, Andy

Which is what an alternator is designed to do. Not "fully charge" the primary (starting) battery.

Originally Posted by Grumndriva

...
In fact, it typically charges at only 13.9 to 14 volts, which is not enough to get my aux battery fully charged (or as well charged as the C-Tek charger gets it).

If you are concerned about getting a "full charge" into the auxiliary battery, why not use your C-Tek do do so via an inverter. May not be the most efficient method but your alternator can provide heaps to "top up" the auxiliary battery.

I will now sit back and wait

thanks guys,
I asked about the cat batteries but no one knew where to get them from so I went with a century ultra high performance 700CCA the biggest one that would fit in the space. It has a 18 month warranty they say century only give 24 months for passenger models?
I paid $229 which I think was a bit pricey but at least I don't have to keep calling out the RAC for a jump start.
RAC wanted to sell me a smaller battery it was a 500CCA but I'm a bit wary of their batteries as they don't seem to last long for people I know who have them.