FLA vs SFL vs AGM Leisure Battery??

[eppiblue]

So I think my FLA 85Ah leisure battery is not quite up to the task anymore... It was in there when I got the Bongo 3 years ago and it was only ever used to charge the ciggie. In the weekend I rewired the stereo (10A max) and Sub (7A max) to run from the leisure battery but it drained it in about 2 hours. It does charge up ok from the relay, to around 12.6 but I think it might be time for an upgrade....

Im doing some research and I thought I would ask the forum for opinions on the various types of LB - eg http://www.multicell.co.uk/marine-leisu ... eries.html

Im a bit confused by the options - FLA vs SFL vs AGM Leisure Battery??

Ive read on other posts the 110Ah http://www.cleversolar.co.uk/shop/deep- ... 87548.html is a good one to go for?

[g8dhe]

Don't get to worried about the specific type, whilst there are small variations in performance there not that great at the end of the day - read about all the types available etc. here http://www.batteryuniversity.com/index.htm .
I would suggest you measure the size of your battery tray and the max. height you can fit in the tray and then search for the largest capacity (Amp/Hours) battery you can find that will fit.

[Dodgey]

Be aware that an externally amplified stereo will kill most batteries in short order.

I'm very surprised your Stereo is rated at less than your sub. Is your "stereo 10A" actually your head unit plus an amp, or do you mean the fuse to the stereo is a 10A fuse?

When you say your sub is "7A max", again is that a fuse rating or something else? Most subwoofer amplifiers I've dealt with have 30Amp fuses on them as sub amps can draw BIG peak currents, hence people use capacitors to even out current demand.

[eppiblue]

Umm, so the head unit specs say Max Current Consumption of 10.0A.
The amp is actually a Pioneer TS-WX210A space saving amp/sub unit which according to its specs is Max Current Consumption of 7A.

Im an Amateur though so perhaps I have completely misunderstood this?

[Dodgey]

The pioneer sub has a very small amplifier, thats why you get away with 7 amps max draw. I looked it up. Still, a compressor fridge uses 4 amps, about 50% of the time ( not always on), so in real terms, 2 amps. Your sub uses 7 amps on max power, most of the time you are listening to music , and maybe 4 or so on lower power, so its going to use the same or more as a fridge when you are listening to music.

As for your head unit, it has to have some meaty amplifiers to use 10 amps. I have a dvd pop out screen jobbie which uses 1 amp playing a movie with the volume loud with 4 speakers. The most i can make it burn listening to music is 1.2 amps. What head unit do you have?

[eppiblue]

I have a Pioneer DEH-3200UB

Its just a standard head unit so perhaps I just don't know how to read manuals, which is here

[Dodgey]

Now I've seen the spec for both your stereo and your sub I can safely say your battery is on it's last legs. There is no way that head unit will draw 10 amps, it's just a safety spec, and the sub isn't thirsty enough to cause a problem in 2 hours.

Had you replied that you had a proper amp, i.e. 150watts or more RMS (not peak) with a sizeable sub, then I'd have suggested that the battery was being thrashed and maybe a couple of hours wasn't so unreasonable.

Back to the original question. Sealed seems to trounce flooded in "convenience": No maintenance, less/no gassing, tollerant of off-horizontal mounting, although there are some down sides to sealed: They charge much more slowly than flooded due to the calcium coating on the plates, they are less tolerant of high temperatures, and can easily be damaged by overcharging. The general opinion is that you get less useful cycles out of sealed.

AGM is a further classification of a sealed battery. It uses glass mat to absorb the electrolyte. These can discharge "harder" - which is kind of irrelevant with leisure applications. The key with AGMs, is that they are far more efficient at charging. A standard flooded battery looses 15-20% of it's charging energy to heat (gell cells 10-16%) whereas AGMs lose as little as 4%. This means nothing if your charging comes from a split relay charging system, or a hookup, but if you are using solar or wind then it is a major boost in efficiency as you are getting MUCH more power from the same resource. AGMs consequently are considerably more expensive than flooded and sealed batteries (apparently!- don't feel like looking into that! )

[eppiblue]

I managed to install the thing but apart from that I don't really understand much else so thanks for your explanations!

I had suspected that battery wasn't up to much... Its been in there since before I got the van, 3 years ago and it's never been 'maintained' or anything so I think I will just replace.

My problem now is that the LB tray that has been installed doesnt allow for much if any expansion, so I might have to rip that out too! Discussing that problem in this thread http://www.igmaynard.co.uk/bongo/forum/ ... 68#p561768

Thanks again