Pulse and glide battery issue/ ideas needed

[Tango Charlie]

If it's an AGM battery, you could lay it on its side to make it fit in the nose.

[Weather Spotter]

its a lead acid battery that has removable vents/ filling ports.

[brucepick]

WeatherSpotter,

Do you want to drive with alternator disabled? Or are you simply trying to have a reasonable EOC distance with headlights and some accessories running?

I think a deep cycle in the standard location will be fine for nice EOC opportunities if alternator is in use when engine is running. If you get a really long mountain downgrade coast (several miles), I expect you can put it in gear, keep coasting, and that will run your alternator just fine.

OTOH, if you want to drive without alternator on a regular basis, you'll likely need more amp hours capacity (aka reserve capacity) than what you can fit in the regular front battery tray. Thus my approx 140AH of battery capacity that I have in my trunk. That's 5.6 hours of reserve, as the spec is service time at 25 amps draw (140AH/25A = 5.6 hours).

But my commute is about 1.25 hours each way, and I want to be able to do that PLUS some lunch time errands if I care to. So I want to be ready for over 3.5 hours drive time WITH headlights on, or 6+ hours without headlights. And I bought more capacity than what I need because you don't want to regularly deeply or fully discharge lead acid batteries.

[Weather Spotter]

so far my goal is just to keep doing my now normal P&G. Which has my engine off for ~80% of my 45 min trip to work. I did do a longer trip to a meet (250 miles each way) with the stock battery and I did not have any issues, but that was all in the sunny day time. My trips home seem to be amp hour neutral to a slight +.

How may and what type of batters did you use for your big pack?

If I could use smaller physical size batteries I could fit 20-40 of them in my nose and tail without any usable space lost, but full sized batters would have to go in the cargo area and that is not a great option for me right now.

Do they make a deep cycle motorcycle battery? would a nicad or LIon battery cells work for this situation?

[brucepick]

You can get small lead acids at electrical supply places. About half or a third of the size of a small loaf of bread. Take a look.

My approx 100AH is a lead acid marine deep cycle from WalMart, labeled 122AH at 1 amp draw. I call it 100 AH at "real" draw levels.

The other is a 40AH LiFePO4 lithium. I can safely draw about 50A from the lead acid and about 32A from the lithium. Those can stand drawing down to about 20% of capacity. Lead acid can be drawn down to about 50%.

Nicads and other types are not really an option. LiFePO4 is nice but $$$$. And needs its own charger built for that chemistry, and can't be safely charged by the alt either.

[Weather Spotter]

but are they deep cycle? the interstate store had smaller batterys but they were not deep cycle.

[Daox]

If you aren't doing any alternator-less driving you don't have anything to worry about capacity wise. I had a 1.5hr daily commute that I did with a small group 24 battery in my Paseo. It handled it like a champ and that was with no alternator.

[Weather Spotter]

it did seem that my trip home (lights off) was charging the battery some what. so that and the plug in charger should make it work

now for my PS pump delete work

[Weather Spotter]

Well after a week of plugging the charger into the same timer as the block heater (2-2.5 hours each morning) my battery is still working and showing a steady voltage. during my morning commute it does not drop below 11.8v and on my way home it stays above 12.4v.

So I decided that I was tired of plugging and unplugging two extension cords each day, so I wired the charger to the same port on the car as my block heater. I did not want to ruin the charger's 120v cable so I made a short extension cord and ran that from the port on the car to the charger's mounting point. if some day I want to give the battery a longer charge without running the block heater I can just undo the short extension and plug in to a wall outlet.

I also got a PS delete done
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...tml#post328487