My starter battery drops well as soon as the engine is turned off. 12.5 + on switch off, voltage plot courtesy of Cerbo from midnight last night until now.
I am going to Solar Shack (In Ashington) on the 25th to sort that out. Will see what options he has for starter battery maintainer, but if he doesn't stock Ablemail or similar I can add that after if I am still seeing a decent drop off with new battery.
Can't beat rear end engagement, they say!
Although it got Schofield in a lot of trouble!
Talking of Schofield, did you say your LB was an AGM 70Ah? That is indeed 'bugger' all, you'll only see half or less of that to use for your LB needs. Ask Solar Shack about an upgrade to Lithium. A 100Ah Lithium will give 3 times the available capacity over a 70Ah AGM LB. We may be confused here because the standard EFB starter battery was 70Ah. Lithium rules tho, certainly pay to ask the Lithium question. Only trying to help drain your available funds....welcome to the forum!
Nope, I didn't m'lud.
Yes 70Ah AGM leisure. I came to same conclusion and already asked Solar Shack for the 100Ah LiFePo4 battery. As you say, not just the Ah rating that matters but depth of discharge. Got several trips booked already and Dubbed Out Festival so getting the set up how we want it is worth it to us
Throw in a bigger starter battery with the AMT, solar panel 150 watt or more, and you'll have a nice system with no anxiety! You can enjoy it more then! After that you can worry about better suspension running on those 20's which look betterer! Or not of course!
How are you measuring these and when? As mentioned the battery drops rapidly in the first hour after shutting the vehicle down. It will also drop when you unlock the van as all the systems fire up. Having something like a BM2 Bluetooth voltage monitor is great because you can see a plot of the voltage and check it without having to unlock the van and open the bonnet.
Measurements were around 7pm (after returning from work at 5pm so had sat on drive for 2 hours). Then in the morning before starting. Unlocked and door open though.
For the BM2, am I looking at the 22 quid one from Amazon or is there a certain brand you would recommend?
Just make sure it’s one that can datalog.
Easily fixed... Photo below now with 20s off and 17s with Cross Climates on now to sell the 20s. Will sign up for VIP forum then post in proper place... Better than FB market place I presume.
Letting it rest for a couple of hours is good, but unlocking and opening the door starts up lots of modules and puts a load on the battery, thereby dropping the voltage. The voltage will recover when everything shuts back down again and the battery settles, minus a tiny amount that was used to run everything. Something like a BM2 will allow you to remotely measure the voltage without firing anything up on the van. I have this one and it’s been great:
Very sensible and smart too.
Installer for solar panels or battery maintainer?
