Dual Battery Setups! Let's see them! Multiple Batteries Thread!

Which dual battery controller?

Pretty sure a 12 volt battery is not going to like having a 22 volts source connected to it. Do the panels have their own voltage controller?

FWIW, I am no guru...

 

4.8 watts and 22 volts? So 0.22 amps? FWIW I have a 50 watt panel and its not nearly enough to help with any charge at all. It gets up to 13.2 volts but unfortunately doesn't do anything to charge the batteries. As far as I know the northstar AGMs, for instance, need about 14-15 volts and 7+amps and more is better. That's right around 100 watts or more. I've heard a rule of thumb of a minimum 1 watt charging per amp hour for solar.

 

http://overlandsolar.com/collections/portable-solar-panels

 

I tried to update the OP as best as I could - for now. There are several more details I'd like to add in there, which I will eventually. If anyone has any input and wanted it included in the OP, or if you find any mistakes in the OP, please let me know.

 

Thanks for taking it over. Looks good

I had a dual battery setup on the front corner with a promarine iso. After a bit of wheeling I started getting a separation of the fender/core. It puts alot of wieght on an unsupported area. So I moved one battery behind the passenger side rear seat and will be rewiring this next week. Click the pic below for the build link.

 

Yea that was one of major reasons why I mounted the 2nd battery on the passenger side (under hood).

Anyone that jumps their truck (not me) or any other LT-type driving may consider evening out the weight distribution, if not relocating one or both batteries.

 

Jumping? Who said I have had all 4 tires off the ground at the same time?

Unfortunately, my 11 has the abs on the pass side, so I put my winch solenoid in the tiny spot left over.

 

Yea I didn't have any space over there either. Had to relocate the PS fluid reservoir


before:


after:

 

This is an amazing idea!

 

That turn out nice. I put mine behind the back seat:

 

Are you worried about the battery out-gassing? I know old Oldsmobile and VW Bugs had batteries in the back seats, but they also had a sort of drain tube in case the battery out-gassed hydrogen. Or something like that.

 

i think most use a AGM battery which are gel and that shouldnt be a problem?

 

I honestly don't know. If anyone has information on this I would greatly appreciate it as it open new mounting locations.

 

The optimum is a sealed battery with dry, spiral cells, it is designed to go into interior locations and be mounted in any position. No gases, no water. Do not try this with a regular battery.

 

Cool thanks

 

Would you happen to have pictures of the tray? I am assuming it is self made?

What size battery would fit there?

 

I don't have pictures of the tray I made, but it just made out of ABS plastic that I had laying around. Here is what it looks like with the PS reservoir removed



You can see the top of that area is elevated ~2". The plastic tray I made kinda looks like this (I used different colors to show the two pieces I had laying around - put together with screws):

Although it's plastic, it's super thick ABS plastic and it's bolted to the truck using some of those existing holes. The Optima is a group 35 and as you can see in the previous pic, it's a snug fit.

Here's a picture of the PS reservoir in it's new place. Just took the existing bracket and moved it, no modifications to it, although I needed longer hoses (2 diff sizes).

 

Thanks for the detailed description, I was hoping to fit a bigger battery than the 35.

Ordered the Columbia Overland tray, but that also limits me to the 35's....

I might use that way to mount a third battery later down the road.


This might be a dumb question, but is there any reason not to mix an AGM battery with a standard lead battery?

 

I have a question for those using a BlueSea 7622 ML-ACR.

When you have your red switch set to the middle setting (both batteries linked), what I think of as auto mode, and both batteries are fully charged, and you shut off the engine, how long does the ML-ACR leave your setup linked?

I guess, I am asking, does it separate them immediately (less than 5 minutes) or does it take a while, say a couple of hours or does it stay linked, what I would call a long time, say 48 hours or longer?

The scenario I am describing is, you are parking the truck in your garage and not using either battery for anything during this time so there is no external drain to speed up the process.

 

I actually just looked into this like an hour ago. I'm getting a dual battery kit from OGE and it uses the ML-ACR, and was wondering the same thing. From my research, and I'm not sure which model it was specifically or if there's a difference for that matter, it links them at 13v detected for 2 minutes, indicating a charge is detected(vehicle running). It opens the relay at 12.75v detected for 30 seconds. So in a perfect world your battery should be at 12.7v, at rest, but it's not. So I would assume it would disconnect them 30 seconds after the vehicle is shut off. This is what I gathered from my research.

Here's the link that I got the info from...
https://www.bluesea.com/resources/1366