Will a L/Cruiser charge 4 batteries???

Here's a suggestion Don't put the Submit button next to the spell check button, that would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

Cheers Steve.

Can not see a problem with your ideas... charge time depends on how much you drain them over night. You can expect anything from 20 - 50 a/h of charge so lets say you have to charge 330amps worth of dead batterys... (130 + 130 + 70) You would take every bit of 7 hours (roughly) to bring them back up... Obviously the charge to these batteries will also depend on things like 1. if the fridges are still running while you are driving 2. If you have hungry items on in the car like the AC. So It may take 4 hours with half dead batteries or it may take 10...
Pete

I think it will charge all the batteries over a long trip but the cable connecting the deep cycle to the alt is going to have a fair voltage drop over that length and running thru isolators so it will take a lot longer to charge. You will have to use manual isolators otherwise it will a long time down the road before you get enough volts in the first deep cycle battery to trip an automatic isolator.
If you are driving every day and black-out the back windows, use insulated travel bags or whatever you can do to make the ambient temp cooler I would think the 130 amp hour battery would be enough to power both fridges.
I am having trouble with my simple set-up at the moment too. The isolator isn`t tripping over to charge the aux battery, I am going to beef up the cable to starter cables and earth straight to the block as well as the chassis.
I am no auto electrician, just trying to help out.
Cheers Chard.

I'm wondering about solar power and/or extra batteries. I was told that a deep cycle battery would run a 40L fridge for 2 days. If you charge up 4 batteries, would they hold their charge until needed?

Steve,
It will be fine.

Lets assume your starting battery is only used for starting - soon after starting it will only want a few amps.

The other 3 batteries, assuming they are in good condition, about 50% discharged, and allowing for the fact that two of them are wet cell deep cycle, will draw about 20-30amps each when they are first charged. This will gradually drop as they are charged.

Your alternator is 110 amp from memory.

Make sure all batteries have a good earth back to the motor.

Cheers

Geeezus!!!v In the beginning there was ONE vehicle with ONE battery and it toured Australia left, right and centre

4 Batteries is a bit of overkill, eh Steve???....LOL


Cheers

Steve,

I'd say no, not properly. I'd do what a mate put me onto. Install a good inverter, plug a good charger into that and wire it via a relay so it all fires up once vehicle is running. Standard alternators are a crap way to charge house batteries.

Just my opinion 12 volt nazis aout there!!!;-))))

Matt

My LC100 struggled to charge 2 batteries - stupid POS!

*Supposedly* nothing wrong with alternator - checked by more than one auto-sparky - but same setup in the 'troll works 100%! I'm blaming the "i'm too clever" alternator in the cruiser as again same setup in previous lo-lux performed perfectly!!

Never solved the issue - killed too many batteries ($$$$$) - luckily I changed cars! LOL!

Now I have my Troll charging the "factory" battery, and N70 Aux and N70 in the camper - all quite happily!

I use a REDARC smart solenoid - far less hassles than the ARB dumb-solenoid i used to have!

[/rant]

Just my experience for you to consider!

:-)

Steve,i have 2 optimas and a 100ah gel in my 100 series and in 4.5 years have had no charging issues even with flats from alternator charging,yes the gel takes ages to charge when run down but a good days driving and its right to go again,i dont see any problems with the setup but use a good management unit to drive the extra batteries and big enough cable.cheers Paul

So the 2 x N70's under the bonnet are the Cranking batteries?

There is a manual "battery ISOLATOR" installed between the 2 x Deep Cycle batteries and the 2 x "Cranking" batteries !!

IMO the 10mm Sq cable is too thin !!

The two batteries wired in parallel are in fact now only ONE battery for the purposes you have described.

If you drive EACH day for 4 - 8 hours, you should have no problems.

BUT: if you had 1 x 120ah (or even better, 2 x 80ah) AGM DEEP CYCLE batteries you would get much better battery performance and reliability, as they will charge in only 1/3 the time of conventional batteries and they will charge higher @ 12.8v where a conventional battery is only 12.6v.

If you had a ~80wt solar panel on the roof you would have NO problems.

Thanks for your replies, you have been helpful.

Cheers Steve.