D40 Dual battery setup

[Arty_74]

Hi all, I just thought I'd share these pics with you of my home made battery box that I'm so proud of.
I took off the short section of the tie down rail (see pics) and used the 4 existing M8 female threads so I didn't have to make any new holes in the Nav, made the box out of 18mm craftwood.
Redarc isolator under the bonnet, 16mm squared cable into the tub, 105aH AGM battery.
Next job is to make a fridge slide for my Engel....any suggestions?

cheers

Arty

 

[Matt76]

That looks terrific!!!!

Great work.

 

[Arty_74]

Thanks Matt, just had a look at your setup in your garage, that's quite impressive.

 

[Thunda Chucka]

Thats awsome fella, nice set-up. May I ask, how do you secure the box down? I very interested in setting my second batt. up like yours. ATM I have my second batt. in a power box that strapped to some partical board which is bolted to the utilly track on the floor.

Cheers
TC

 

[Arty_74]

Thanks Thunda, if you look at the second picture, I took off the short piece on the side utility track and used the existing 4 x M8 bolt threads, and the inside wall sits firmly down on the tub floor, I glued some rubber on to the bottom edge of the board.
I used 18mm craftwood for the extra strength also made the box a bit longer to store my bits and pieces in there as well.

Arty

 

[jayk]

it looks groovy arty, u taking orders?!
im in if ya do!

 

[Thunda Chucka]

Cheers Arty, much appriciated. I'll try post some pics when I have completed my box.

TC

 

[Jason]

Nice job, looks factory!

 

[Arty_74]

Thanks guys.... as for taking orders haha not enough hours in the day for that, gotta work on my fridge slide project now... any ideas apart from buying the genuine Engel slide $$$$

 

[justdrinkbeer]

Pro job, looks awesome. I put mine under the tray in an alloy box that I got custom made to suit, was a shitfight of a job.
I saw some drawers in a van once that had the slide made from unistrut (plumbers & sparkies use for brackets) with the rollers being ball bearings.
Would be overkill for a fridge slide but something along those lines would work.
I'm ducking into a custom 4x4/tradesmans drawers shop on prob monday night about something else, i'll ask what he has while i'm there

 

[Woody418]

Has anyone here fitted the Piranha Duel system kit?, the battery mounts under the drivers side chassis rail. Looks like a good way to save some space.

Navara Battery Tray BTPF062.5 - Battery Trays

Dual Batteries - Page 2 - Nissan Frontier / Navara Forum

Cheers Woody

 

[ants_oz]

Woody,

I've been considering that Piranha one for a little while...something on my "to do" list.

If I decide to go down that path however, I will be going for a fully sealed "gel" battery that I know will handle immersion.

 

[KraftyPg]

We installed a Piranha on the old mans crewman and had problems from about 12 months after it was installed. It got to the point earlier this year where we ended up replacing both the battery and the isolator and he's now running the same Projecta I am. That's not to say all people will suffer with Piranha, I know people that have run them successfully I just wouldn't bother going back to them.

And as Antz says if your going the chassis mount make sure you get one of those fully sealed batteries even if you don't plan on making your Nav a submarine.

Also that link to the US forums should come with a warning along the lines of "beer goggles a must"

 

[ants_oz]

Got to agree with Krafty - the cradle is one thing, the isolator/management system is something else entirely...

I know a few people running the Projecta diode isolater and they have had trouble free use from them.

I'm also familiar with the Redarc Smart Start isolator - it has a great reputation and would be high on my list of candidates when the time comes to go shopping.

 

[rescue]

The 2 biggest problems with the Piranha system are where it mounts and that you can only have a small battery and Optima is the preferred fitment. I'm fortunate that having a canopy and drawer system there's a good deal of space that would be otherwise wasted so I've fitted a battery each side of the drawers.

 

[KraftyPg]

The only reason I didn't go for the Redarc was that my mechanic got bigger discounts on Projecta and since I was getting the cables and stuff elsewhere and only needed the isolator, cost was the only thing it came down too. There is some fairly cheap (compared to retail) Projecta's on ebay but I still managed to get mine cheaper than ebay and no postage so it was all good.

 

[Old.Tony]

Just a reminder: if you're charging the battery from the vehicle alternator, you'll only ever get it to about 70-75% of its capacity. Because you should never bring the battery below about 50% of its capacity, it means your available "working" capacity is at best 25%.

Use an inverter to power a C-Tek charger to charge the battery up. 100% charge every time, plus better battery management = longer battery life and twice the usable capacity available.

I don't think new batteries have a big issue with immersion, or else we'd never wade bonnet-deep in water. I'd not do it often, and I'd probably want to give the thing a clean afterwards, which is not easy when the thing's under the belly. But if I *were* putting something underneath, I wouldn't go standard "check the fluid level every month" - I'd get a Gel like Anthony suggests.

 

[WoodyD40]

I've been wondering why the charge to a 2nd battery will only be 'less' than full charge?

I'm not a sparky, so maybe i'm not understanding why one battery (the crank battery) is supposed to get a full charge, but a 2nd battery (mine is currently through a 50amp relay) does not get a full charge.

Does it have something to do with voltage drop when you have upto 5m of cable going to the tub of the Ute ?

 

[Old.Tony]

While there is a voltage drop due to the cable length, this isn't the problem here.

The car alternator produces a whole mess of power and the regulator keeps it down at around 14.4V (sometimes up to 14.7V). This is very deliberate, in order to prevent boiling the acid away in the battery. This means your main battery isn't ever really fully charged either - it's usually brought up to 70-75% of full charge. It might get a little higher than that, but that's not typical for a suburban vehicle.

Collyn Rivers has a good explanation here and here as well as explaining the charging process here.

 

[WoodyD40]

Thanks Tony for those links ... answers my query very effecively.