Dual Battery

[Ricko1966]

I will get more and better pics soon. I dont have a test light or multimeter,yet, but the deep cycle batt is dead. And nothing is tapped into the charging system yet. The po did use a toggle to trigger the solenoid. It is on the center console.

Okay if that solenoid is triggered via a toggle switch. Dirt simple,disconnect dead battery negative cable, hook a jumper cable from good battery positive to junk battery positive. Do your lights etc work? If so great,move on, move the jumper cable from dead battery positive to the unused large solenoid post. Flip your toggle,do your lights work,turn the toggle off, did they go out. If so everything works. Change the battery and add a 16 gauge wire with a 20 amp fuse from B+ on good battery to unused big post on solenoid. Flip the toggle when you want to charge battery number 2. I'd move the trigger from the toggle to an exciter that was on anytime the engine was running. But baby steps, let's get it working first,we can make it fancy later.

 

[edgephoto]

Is the effort worth it? Just make sure your alternator is big enough and the alternator and battery cables can handle the loads.

 

[YakkoWarner]

My biggest concern would be that if that deep-cycle is really dead - if everything else is wired up right and it attempts to charge once the engine is running; will it draw too much current? I always like to have some sort of current limiter or at least a fuse on in the circuit.

 

[Ricko1966]

Reread #4#10#12 and number 16

 

[Ditch Wicked]

I don't know that that is not continuous duty,at this point we don't even know if it works. The checks I asked him to make will tell us. If it works I'd use it until it doesn't work. Then we can worry about what to replace it with. At this point we need to see if it works.

Here is a front(?) view of the solenoid.

 

[Ricko1966]

Here is a front(?) view of the solenoid.

Everything I wrote should apply to this unit

 

[Ditch Wicked]

Thanks for all the good info so far. I hate to be a bother, but what the heck. I spent some time tracing the wires coming off the second Batt. And I dont know if pulling the grounds off the wires to the lights will be an issue. The one with out E-tape goes to the 3 back up lights. The one with e-tape goes through the firewall.

 

[Ricko1966]

Thanks for all the good info so far. I hate to be a bother, but what the heck. I spent some time tracing the wires coming off the second Batt. And I dont know if pulling the grounds off the wires to the lights will be an issue. The one with out E-tape goes to the 3 back up lights. The one with e-tape goes through the firewall.

No bother ground,anything that's to the battery negative to the car body, or something metal on the engine you can just clamp it in 1 big mess to something metal with a pair of vice grips,to preform the tests on my previous post.

 

[Ditch Wicked]

OK. thanks. I will do that tomorrow and post the results here.