The 150 series Dual Battery Guide

[Ben80]

Hi Guys, A question to all with booster diodes. I have one of Leigh's boosters(actually on my second as the first sustained damage) and I am seeing voltages of 14.7(cold start) and 14.3(stinking hot). I have just purchased a 100a/h agm to fit in a portable battery box. My question is will the sustained high voltage damage the agm battery? Specs for the battery recommend 14.4-15v for cyclic use but my concern is long runs when the battery is fully charged as its only load is a 40L fridge.

[LeighW]

Hi Tim,

It is nice to receive positive feedback from customers, your units as usual are performing very well so you also must be doing something write!

[drivesafe]

Hi Leigh, and if you haven’t already, you will be hearing from a very upset LC200 owner.

I referred him to you after this following disaster.

This is an E-mail I received last week and demonstrates the need to get RELIABLE info for equipping a vehicle with a DBS that actually works and not rely on what so called experts in this field claim.

These guys fitted their own DBS and had no problems yet the fifth guy got his DBS “professionally” installed, and look at the results.

Note, the D2 has a constant voltage alternator, the D3 has a variable operating voltages, and the D4s have Regenerative Braking Voltage operation.

This covers just about every type of alternator operation.

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Hi Tim

Sorry for the long email – in the second half of the email my mate with a 200 series wants to know if you can help him

It seems like only yesterday that we installed your dual battery kits in 4 vehicles (D3, 2 x D4, D2) ready for a big trip. We’ve been back a while so I just wanted to give you an update on how the battery kits went.

In short, they were brilliant. We installed all 4 kits you sent us in one day. Aside from the fiddly process of removing trim pieces and working in the tight confines of a Land Rover engine bay the installation was straightforward with your instructions.#
Throughout the trip the kits never missed a beat – and others on the trip had lots of electrical issues.

On a few occasions the battery guard did it’s job cutting out the fridges, but this was usually when we were camped in one spot for a few day (very little or no driving) in very hot weather (making the fridges run almost non-stop). It took surprisingly little driving to provide a good bulk charge back into the batteries.

We travelled the Tanami Track, Gibb River Rd, Kalumburu Rd, Mitchell Falls NP Road and the Great Central Road and nothing rattled loose or played up in any way.

Our friends in a 200 series Land Cruiser, on the other hand, did not fare so well when it came to electrics. Following local advice he had a Ctek DC-DC charger installed professionally by a very large and well known auto electrician here in Newcastle. They also installed an auxiliary circuit for his fridges and accessories etc connected to the aux battery.

In short the system never worked properly. Initially the DC-DC was installed in a very hot part of the engine bay making it cut out once the engine warmed up. We repositioned it behind his grill but even then he only got a useful charge on big driving days. On days were we did short trips around camp he was always having problems with a flat aux battery (including the extra aux battery on the trailer). To further add to his woes the auto elec did NOT install any form of low voltage protection on the circuit for his fridges and accessories. He ran his batteries far too low a few times and it didn’t take long for the aux in the engine bay and the aux on the trailer to both die completely.

He couldn’t believe how well our systems worked. So he was wanting to find out a little more:
###•###Would one of your dual battery isolators be suitable for his vehicle (VX 200 series Land Cruiser)?
###•###All three of his batteries (starter, aux car, aux trailer) are deep cycle sealed lead acids. Would this be a problem (we understand they won’t charge as fast as an Optima for example)?
###•###Can the battery types be mixed (if he added an AGM under the bonnet for example)?
###•###He does not have a winch at the moment but may install one in the future. Would this mean the 160 is his best choice?
###•###Can one of your battery guards be added to his fridge and accessories circuit for low voltage protection?

Thanks again for your excellent kit and thanks in advance for your advice.#
Feel free to use my feedback as a testimonial if you wish.

Thanks

The Toyota owner is now fitting a similar system to the four Disco setups but with the addition of one of the HKB Electrics “FUSES”

[LeighW]

Thanks AK7 and others.

I would have been surprised if anyone had had any issues as all my original test units are still going strong and many units have been in cars for over 6 years now. Personally have never had a complaints all feedback has been from happy customers.

Cheers
Leigh

[AK7]

Leigh, my diode has only been in for ~3 months. It worked from the moment it was dropped it in. My batteries seem healthy and my car hasn't exploded. I did lots of reading before buying your diode and found lots of people using it and recommending it, not to mention that your service is above and beyond. It's a pretty good sell mate. Keep up the great work

[Fred63]

[QUOTE=BlakMoth;492070]That's plenty sorted Fred. You'll only run out of cold beers if you don't buy enough

that has happened but I always make sure I am in range of a fresh supply the next day.
then there is always the stuff on top shelf

[BlakMoth]

That's plenty sorted Fred. You'll only run out of cold beers if you don't buy enough


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Fred63]

I have.^^^^^

I was hoping to get some info on what people are using and how it has worked for them and what they are running from the aux battery.
for my requirements I will be going
redarc bcdc 1225 with a battery
when camped with the van I have 2 X 100 Ah batteries with solar 120 + 130 watts panels.
Aux will just be for short trips where we will just camp over night without the van and move on.

[AJ120]

AJ.

need some more popcorn to get through the latest episode

Don't know about popcorn, I am thinking about taking up drinking though

Cheers Andrew

[Fred63]

AJ.

need some more popcorn to get through the latest episode

[MelbournePark]

Yup ... the big Companies don't provide much but marketing stuff and that's the way they want it.

Its interesting too that Costco sell batteries here, and they used to sell a Bosch marine battery here, but now they don't. Maybe its too tough for them to get involved with anything but a starter battery. In the USA, the discount stores rebrand top quality batteries, which sell for a fraction of the price of the top quality branded batteries do. Their RV and boat market is huge and those people have to buy a minimum of 8 decent sized batteries for a boat, I think we don't have such discounts.

As some posters here have said, they've bought batteries from RV caravan places for heavily discounted prices, and those places get good buy prices. Unlike our 4WD dealers who would not have the volume of deep cycle sales that a caravan place gets. I think the caravan places have good value batteries, some camper vans etc use gel and AGMs too, but I've not seen an Optima mentioned.

[AJ120]

Must have had my diode in for around 4 1/2 years, fit and forget, zero issues here.

Cheers Andrew

[LeighW]

You'll die worrying about it, I'm surprised they persist with the no I'll affects claim on the Australian website though, the figures provided by the parent clearly show they suffer the same limitations as other batteries though to a lesser degree?

Again it all gets back to what your happy with and believe is good value for money

[MelbournePark]

Have you a link regarding the:

"Optima also do publish their full cycle life, which is 350 full cycles. They do that in the USA. Quote:

"Yellow Top has been verified in Life Cycle testing to withstand up to 350 complete discharges".

Its here, in an Optima pdf blurb, its on page 4. The heading says in bright red text:
" Superior Deep
Cycle Performance
– Power to go the
distance... "

I don't know about you, but to me that makes a joke out of there statement on the Australian website that you can discharge the battery to 0% SOC without any adverse affects on the battery!

But that cannot make sense! Obviously, the deeper you go, the lower the cycle life. There's no miracle there IMO.

Go from 10.5 flat to 20%, and various test charts I've read double the cycle life typically. Go from 20% to 50%, and you will gain three times the cycle life gain over the 20%. Hence often 6 times the cycles from 10.5 flat to 50% AH capacity. In lab setups. Diff P curves for all but near enough for me ...

I think the figure probably makes sense if you jumble up their claims. Consider that Optima say (on their Aussie web site too) that their AH rating is not the same as other AGM AH ratings. Optima says their AH figure is referenced to 20% ... in other words, their 41 AH is actually 51, their 55 is 69 and their 66 is 83 (my calculations not Optima's).. If you were doing a battery bank for say a boat, then you would setup the system to take into account their rated figure, not run all the way to non operational, because its not economic to run down to 10.5 %. Because running down to 10.5 or using the last 20%, typically halves your battery life. So no way would a boat person do that, its crazy.

So I thought to make such a claim, that Optima were referencing their actual usable capacity - ie in the 55 AH, you use that 55 AH. Not the actual 69!!!

They said it not me!

That's a reason why I get frustrated by the lack of data ...

Note too many - most IMO - of the claims reference to generic batteries ... such as "lead acid" ... sometimes "deep cycle" or "deep cycling" ... rarely a competitive product's technology.

We can guess that if one goes from full discharge to 20%, then that doubles the cycles. So, that would be 700. 50% might be 6 times ... ie 2,000 cycles. We don't know the benefits of less usage for the spiral wound batteries, but we do know typical usage longer life curves ... there's a huge difference between 20% and 50% etc.

So ... I thought the 350 a decent figure ...

Then again ... maybe its another Typo ??? I just scratch my head an not worry too much ... the Spiral's feature IMO is its fast charge and current output. If those aren't necessary, there are better returns on one's dollar IMO., just like you've said from day one.

For a caravan with an air con though, I;d go Optimas if weight doesn't matter. I can;t understand that all the makers haven't used them and offered bush non 240V power point air con setups with a big inverter, some Optimas for starting the air con compressor, and then the $1,400 or even $900 genny runs it ....

And there's lots of cycle stuff on them, all done a number of years ago, for the electric vehicle usage, people did heaps of testing and published it, only problem was they were mostly interested in current flow issues rather than ultimate cycle life.

Warning - Crazy Comment:
Then again, I don't know why the caravan industry hasn't gone down to Toyota and asked for their brake hybrid set ups. Why not use the caravans brakes to generate power to their battery banks, and that way the brakes also last forever? I guess you'd need a generator / electric motor for that setup to work .... But ... that could mean if you get your trailer stuck, you could power its wheels out!!! That could all be very handy when you get stuck in severe terrain ... you could move the heavy trailer around under its own power too ...

Hybrid vehicles can't tow much either ... hence there's no hybrid Landcruiser - it couldn't tow anything heavy, the hybrid system couldn't handle it ...

Maybe one day ...

[craigm]

No this is a battery that died early this year mjr. I replaced it with another. ( the one that was flattened to 5 v). Which has recovered nicely. I tried to recover the dead battery from early this year but it failed the test and is now sitting on the floor taking up room in my garage ( must do something about that!)