Auxiliary battery

[Doctari]

Unfortunately, I know little about electronics. So, what comes with the auxiliary battery, and why would I want an auxiliary battery? Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[ECrider]

Hers with the fridge connected View attachment 7819751View attachment 7819752

Got it - mucho grassy arse.

 

[AnD3rew]

Unfortunately, I know little about electronics. So, what comes with the auxiliary battery, and why would I want an auxiliary battery? Thanks in advance for your help.

If you aren’t camping and using a lot of accessories like fridges and camp lights and aren’t going to be in remote places and aren’t winching you don’t need one.

An auxiliary battery lets you run your camp
Fridge and lights etc overnight without running the engine and ensures you are still able to start the car in the morning. Also good for redundancy in remote areas in case of a failure and in heavy duty winching the power demands of the winch can exceed the capacity of a single battery, the second battery help’s you use the winch to its fullest capacity.

 

[MarkH]

Unfortunately, I know little about electronics. So, what comes with the auxiliary battery, and why would I want an auxiliary battery? Thanks in advance for your help.

Typically to run a 12V fridge & lights and maybe a small 240V inverter for charging gear. Saves draining the starter battery overnight when off grid. You get the 105Ah battery, and an accessories (cig) plug in the cargo area, and extra USB sockets behind the stowage box. A Ctek Smartpass connects the starter & auxiliary batteries to allow alternator charging while on the move. It also protects the auxiliary from running flat and can connect the two batteries for starting if required.

 

[Oskar]

You really can't beat lifting the seats and just looking at the wiring - follow it from the positive terminal and see where it goes. Any information gained this way will probably stay with you far longer than just reading about it. Having said that, reading the Smartpass manual is also very useful, although I do struggle with the pictures indicating the various lights and what they mean when lit/flashing.

Unfortunately I do not see all the wires. A drawing could help. Cabling to CTEK is very clear also read through the manual. Still not 100% clear how the outlets are connect.

 

[ADVAW8S]

Do we know what the max charging of Ctek in Grenadier?

 

[anand]

Do we know what the max charging of Ctek in Grenadier?

Up to 120A theoretically, assuming the battery would accept that much for any length of time.

 

[MrMike]

Just some feedback for an AU owner on the factory dual battery, he runs a National Luna 60lt fridge. He says that it is not suitable to run this fridge and is changing it over to lithium. He's just clicked over 10k klms and loves it, but said the battery for his usage is lacking.

 

[Oskar]

He says that it is not suitable to run this fridge

Did he specify anything? Is it just the capacity?

 

[MarkH]

It's a 105Ah lead acid EFB battery (enhanced flooded battery), no good for any fridge, might give you 1.5 days at most when camped up with a 40L fridge. A 60L fridge/freezer would flatten it easily within 24hrs. The Smartpass is insufficient for charging it with fridge use, need to add the Ctek 25A DC charger or better still an Enerdrive or Redarc 40A DC charger. A 200Ah litihum would be best for the Luna fridge. Trick is finding a drop-in that will fit the space where the auxiliary is or using a slimline format lithium in the cargo area.

 

[Tazzieman]

Bushman 35-52L uses 16Ah/day

 

[anand]

It's a 105Ah lead acid EFB battery (enhanced flooded battery), no good for any fridge, might give you 1.5 days at most when camped up with a 40L fridge. A 60L fridge/freezer would flatten it easily within 24hrs. The Smartpass is insufficient for charging it with fridge use, need to add the Ctek 25A DC charger or better still an Enerdrive or Redarc 40A DC charger. A 200Ah litihum would be best for the Luna fridge. Trick is finding a drop-in that will fit the space where the auxiliary is or using a slimline format lithium in the cargo area.

Not to derail this too far, but I'm just not aligning with your power requirements...

For instance, in our Tacoma, we have a 92aH main battery (factory Toyota battery). This powers a 50L ARB fridge continuously. The only supplement is a 80W solar panel on the hood, that, at best, provides ~60W to the battery. Assuming ambient temps are below ~33ºC, this battery will run the fridge for >1 day and still stay >12.0V. Prior to the solar panel the fridge would disconnect at 11.8v after about a day.

Regardless, of that; I'm confused as to how the SmartPass120S wouldn't be capable of adequately charging the aux battery for fridge use when it can provide up to 120A continuously to the aux battery. EFB batteries should be able to accept a continuous charge rate of something along the lines of 40% of capacity, so about 45A (maybe 60A for a short while). This would mean it can recharge the depleted (50% SoC) EFB within 1 hour of driving. If you account for a substantially slower charge rate as absorption turns to float, it would still be within 2 hours of driving (or having the engine running, more accurately). The alternator has no problems outputting this charge rate at idle, so even parked up at camp while you are loading will roll into this time.

200Ah of LiFePO4 would effectively quadruple the available power (compared to 105Ah EFB), and while it would almost certainly fit (the Victron 200aH comes to mind due to its fairly small packaging, or the Dakota Lithium's new Group 24F 135Ah), seems pretty overkill to run the fridge alone.

 

[MarkH]

In

Bushman 35-52L uses 16Ah/day

Kept closed in a climate controlled lab at 25C. It'd be at least double that in the field in summer.

 

[Burki]

just a quick one, maybe a stupid question as I have no circuit diagram of my Trial-Grenny:
If the engine is not running, is everything regarding power consumption going to the Aux battery? Similar to what I have in my motor caravan?
Or only dedicated circuits like the winch (Aux switch7) or other Aux switches ? Or Nato plug (which should go the starter battery as I know it from my MAN)?

 

[anand]

Or only dedicated circuits like the winch (Aux switch7) or other Aux switches ? Or Nato plug (which should go the starter battery as I know it from my MAN)?

Only dedicated circuits are powered from the aux battery

 

[Burki]

which ones? Only the Aux switches?

 

[DCPU]

just a quick one, maybe a stupid question as I have no circuit diagram of my Trial-Grenny:
If the engine is not running, is everything regarding power consumption going to the Aux battery?

Have you lifted the seats and taken a look?

Does it look like this?

Track the positive from the auxiliary, does it go into a large (amp) in line fuse box and then out to the Smartpass Output terminal?

 

[Burki]

yepp, got the pic already, all clear but i didn't measure every line.
To be clear finally: The smartpass output guarantees that ANY load is feeded from there?
So it is the same set up I use in my motor caravan? There is cteck as well.

 

[DCPU]

yepp, got the pic already, all clear but i didn't measure every line.

I'm not measuring anything either; but what do you see? The auxiliary battery is only connected to the Output terminal of the Smartpass

To be clear finally: The smartpass output guarantees that ANY load is feeded from there?

If you have nothing connected to the consumer output of the Smartpass (the red triangle) then you have no load to feed from this side of the Smartpass.

Everything is fed from the main battery, with the Smartpass able to pulse charge the main battery when required.

 

[Burki]

got it. But why all these things are not documented in the owner's manual for the trial with aux battery? Poor performance from Ineos, sorry.

 

[Burki]

@DCPU
fyi, I am currently installing a 1 kW broadcast transmitter in the back of the trunk as a 19" flight case.
In normal operation, the whole thing is supplied by a 2 kva Honda generator.
as a backup i have a 1.5 kva inverter, which i connect directly to the aux battery with short and thick cables.
the power amplifier from the transmitter is attached to the inverter, i actually didn't want to attach the exciter to the aux battery, but to connect it to the smartpass (fridge connector). if the aux battery is empty, i can still connect the 100 watt exciter to the antenna as the worst scenario. But I'm not sure if that's a good idea.