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Battery tray recommendations

SimonD

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Mar 15, 2010
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australia
I've removed the rear seats of our truck in readiness to add two leisure batteries in parallel on the rear seat floor in the middle. The associated electrics (CTEK) will be mounted on the rear cargo cage above this. I'll be adding two AGM batteries here but wanted to ask if anyone can recommend and battery trays that may already be in the market that may suit this kind of purpose? They will sit inside some ply shelves.
Although using AGM, I want to ensure the enclosure is well vented and has plastic/rubber protection for the base of the truck, on the off chance I need to replace an AGM with a lead-acid and it leaks.
 
Think twice about using two batteries Simon. The chances of one discharging the other are pretty high. You're better off looking at a single battery of the combined capacity you are considering, might be easier to locate as well?

There's various trays and boxes on eBay if that's any help though I don't know of one like you describe. A cut down plastic storage bin might do or even use one with the lid. Just a thought.
 
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I have one Optima yellow in the rear running from the twin CTEK system and it's been absolutely ample for everything I've done so far. Coupled to the Victron system so you can see what's happening, it's never really been close to discharged (11.8v).

Mine doesn't sit in a tray I have to say, it's clamped down but there's a greater chance of a Lotto win than it leaking I think. Been very pleased with that set up.

I have a twin Optima set up in the trailer and it's not behaving quite right I don't think. If you are determined to put two in the truck, I'd seriously suggest having them on a changeover switch so that you only run one at once - for both load and charging. For some reason my set up in the trailer doesn't look like it's behaving as one massive battery. I've been over it a dozen times and can't work it out. It's like one normal battery.

It runs down quite quickly. Parked since the Summer it's still sitting there at nearly 13v. But run something off it and it dips quite quickly. OK so I'm running kettles and toasters and so on so I guess I'm asking for it and my inverter isn't pure sine wave so probably very inefficient, but besides that, it still doesn't perform as well as the single in the vehicle. Easy to wire in a marine switch that gives one, the other or both if necessary.
 
Thanks for the replies. I am going for two because mine's an automatic and it gives me an "out" in a dicey battery situation [not considering dropping to 12V start]. I have the CTEKs, solar and a monitor to keep an eye on things. Appreciate what you both said about making them work well in parallel. I think the trick is to ensure one side of the CTEK connects to one battery while the other side of the CTEK connects to the other battery. Sometimes people connect the CTEK to one battery only thinking parallel connections will keep them the same.
The idea of a changeover switch is a neat one for redundancy again. I will try the setup on smaller trips and see how it fares - giving me the option to add in when it's time to hit the road. I will report back as it goes.
 
I actually tried a diagonal connection on my batteries. I read up on it and it seemed that with only two batteries sitting next to each other it made little or no difference. Where there are big banks of batteries, connecting to one end and looping to the others had a huge effect on the performance. The difficulty that I have had is that I am connecting to so many things that I'm a bit lost if truth be told. I have several inputs and several outputs from the two batteries including all the monitoring stuff that it got rather complicated. I'm wanting to move the batteries ultimately and that will give me a chance to rethink the wiring. I had some very odd results with earth wires where connecting to the lug on the battery gave utterly different results to connecting to a cable that was connected to the lug. Appreciate that this probably doesn't make a deal of sense, but non of the wiring set ups that came with the equipment considered connections other than their own.

An example was the CTEK solar input. It resolutely refused to work with the earth lead connected to the battery. As soon as I connected to the chassis, it worked. And of course the chassis was connected directly to the battery.

I might go with a changeover myself in the end and treat them as individual batteries. Or maybe just take one out. Do I need two in the trailer?
 
I now run a 1+2 (starter+leisure) set up based around an IBS split charger, twin solar panels. The only thing I would say is to consider that AGM and lead acid batteries have subtly different full charge voltages - ie don't mix the two technologies. I have been advised to look at battery to batttery charging but have to admit that I am reluctant to have a single point of failure. I have arranged my 2nd leisure battery to be a stand-in starter battery if that should fail. My 3rd battery is in the engine bay in the place that used to house the AHC - but the fuel filter has to be moved slightly to fit it all in. I'm not a great fan of having batteries in the passenger compartment particularly in an accident from spills or fires. For the leisure batteries I chose a pair of batteries using the same technology from the same manufacturer and with similar Ah capacity so that they share the load
 
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