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I have a 120 series V6 Prado GX with a dual battery setup using an auto isolator, battery monitor and the booster diode. Cable is 25mm between batteries (under bonnet) and 16mm to the rear of the vehicle.
With the diode I was often seeing 14.8V however I recently did a desert trip where I was consistently seeing 13.9v.
Is this the temp compensating side of things?
It appears after a number of days even after doing plenty a driving the voltage would never get back to the high voltage figures until I put the battery on a 240v charger. Then it would return to around 14.6v or so.
My load on the aux battery was typically around 5 or 6A (old engel fridge) and sometimes when driving I would be running an inverter to charge cameras/phone/laptops/etc. I measured this later and was pulling 13A with the clamp meter at the battery.
It appears the alternator does not sense the additional loading and charging requirement for the aux battery.
- Would isolating the main battery (from charging) and using the alternator to only charge the aux battery help this issue so that the vehicle would sensed the additional load requirements?
- I have been given a 10A DC-DC charger (cheap). Can this be installed in conjunction with the isolator/alternator setup, as I guess solar would be?
With the diode I was often seeing 14.8V however I recently did a desert trip where I was consistently seeing 13.9v.
Is this the temp compensating side of things?
It appears after a number of days even after doing plenty a driving the voltage would never get back to the high voltage figures until I put the battery on a 240v charger. Then it would return to around 14.6v or so.
My load on the aux battery was typically around 5 or 6A (old engel fridge) and sometimes when driving I would be running an inverter to charge cameras/phone/laptops/etc. I measured this later and was pulling 13A with the clamp meter at the battery.
It appears the alternator does not sense the additional loading and charging requirement for the aux battery.
- Would isolating the main battery (from charging) and using the alternator to only charge the aux battery help this issue so that the vehicle would sensed the additional load requirements?
- I have been given a 10A DC-DC charger (cheap). Can this be installed in conjunction with the isolator/alternator setup, as I guess solar would be?