2nd Battery

05redx

Forum Member
Joined
Jul 13, 2008
Messages
115
Location
Melbourne, Australia
Hi All,
Have just purchased a 40 lt Engel fridge, and am wondering what others have done with regards to a 2nd battery or power pack.

Cheers
 
G'day Grant and welcome to the new and improved ORS.com:woohoo:

I too have begun to contemplate dual battery setups and the like, but as time is precious commodity these days, that is about as far as I've got :(

Tick-Tac with Eden. You'll find him in the Members List. From memory, he did a DIY dual bettery install. He maybe able to assist you further.

Places like Battery World are also a good place to start.

A good dual battery setup can be quite a handy thing.
 
yeah i put one together but was only for emergency purposes really but i have connected a few ciggy outlets to it for laptop, air bed pump and stuff. i used a red arc brand (good brand) isolator from ebay and 12v dc circuit breakers. if your going to use it for a fridge you will want a deep cycle battery. unless your going away for weeks you can get around using a fridge. buy a good quality esky (marine type) freeze all your meat, use 1.25 litre bottles of water and freeze them (not bags of ice), long life milk and cover the lot in the esky with a towel inside. i'e used this method for a long time and can last for over ten days.
this is a pic of my first attempt but i turrned the batterys around so the active is facing in.
DSC03681.jpg
 
05redx said:
Hi All,
Have just purchased a 40 lt Engel fridge, and am wondering what others have done with regards to a 2nd battery or power pack.

Cheers
Click to expand...
I have a pair of portable Waeco battery packs - they're (from memory) 36Ahr each, and have ISO and cigarette lighter plugs on them, and charge through your cigarette/accessory socket. Not sure what the current draw of your 40L fridge is but I'm guessing 2Ahr, so a pair of the 36Ahrs would last you about a day.
 
Hi All,
Because of the lack of space under the bonnet, I'm thinking about a Thumper 60 amp/hour battery pack. Also means I don't have to haul the weight of a 2nd battery around when I don't need it. Found one on ebay for $584 including charging kit. Any thoughts?
 
Hmmm....

I remember seeing a thread on the old site where the original OEM battery was replaced with 2 batteries that, when placed next to each other, were slightly larger than the OEM.

One was a Gel battery for cranking and the other was a deep cycle for powering all the other bits and pieces. Optima's I think they were.

They were all hooked up to a isolator and there were leads going to the back of the Foz that were hooked up to a sine wave inverter and a charger bank.
 
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If you think about it, the benefit of a dual battery setup is that you can mount the second battery anywhere in the car!

Take alook at this system by National Luna. It is a drop in setup with everything in one. Incorporates a built-in battery monitor, auto split charge isolator and fused outputs :woohoo: $700 there abouts.

397139d7ddvw9.jpg


Here is the installation manual for the above setup
 
For those on a limited budget here's how I survived two weeks on Fraser with a Waeco fridge.....

The battery I used was a Delkor DC27 Deep Cycle 80ah beastie from Batteries Plus ($222). I then mounted it in a black plastic battery box with chunky positive and negative posts, a voltmeter and a lighter socket built in (plenty of these on eBay).

I took my trusty Swallow AC/DC 2 charger with me. This charger can run off mains (240v) or 12v so I made a cable that had a ciggy lighter plug on one end which fed into the charger. This meant that I could charge while driving. As the deep cycle battery was also connected to the fridge I could turn off the engine and the charger would automatically switch off and the battery would power the fridge.

When I got back into the car it was a simple button press to restart the charger.

The beauty of this setup was that it could all be carried into hotel rooms, resorts, tents, picnic areas without any major headaches. The 80ah meant that the fridge could run for 3-4 days without power. I also ran some basic camping lights, phone chargers, laptops and MP3 players/speakers off an inverter off the same battery. I could charge up whenever I came to civilisation.

I like my setup....it works well.
 
Hey Subaruby!

It definitely is a very useable set up. Recently I used it to power a mate's shack on his property for a weekend. He has no power or running water but we were able to watch DVD's, have cold drinks / fresh food, run lights and music for the weekend. The portability of it is very useful. I also use it as a jump starter pack.

I checked out your link - it's good but you can get better value. If you are on eBay look for a seller called Louisa_Battery or LouisaBattery. They sell double the capacity calcium Deep Cycles for an extra $50 - so 80ah for around $200. Look at the Delkor DC27.

I'll post some pics over the weekend.

Regards,
Raf
 
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