Batteries

[flyinbronco]

I have an 62 qt. ARB fridge in the back of my super duty. I wired in a third battery to power it. I set the fridge to full power draw since I'm not worried about the starting batteries being drained. In 80 degree weather with the camper shell opened while camping for air circulation and the fridge temp setting at 34 degrees the battery will power the fridge for 3 days without starting the truck to charge the battery. Sitting in the parking lot at the hotel in Cabo when it's 100 degrees outside and the back closed up all day it will kill the battery in one day. Adding a solar charger would be the hot setup.

[Becks_Bronco]

I have an 62 qt. ARB fridge in the back of my super duty. I wired in a third battery to power it. I set the fridge to full power draw since I'm not worried about the starting batteries being drained. In 80 degree weather with the camper shell opened while camping for air circulation and the fridge temp setting at 34 degrees the battery will power the fridge for 3 days without starting the truck to charge the battery. Sitting in the parking lot at the hotel in Cabo when it's 100 degrees outside and the back closed up all day it will kill the battery in one day. Adding a solar charger would be the hot setup.

I've been thinking i'd add a solar blanket to toss on the roof for mine. I rarely camp in the same spot more than 1 or 2 nights.

[hobbyturnedobsession]

I'm going to ask a really dumb question but realistically wouldnt an 8w be sufficient to charge the battery while the fridge is running?

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[Becks_Bronco]

I'm going to ask a really dumb question but realistically wouldnt an 8w be sufficient to charge the battery while the fridge is running?

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at 12v, that's only .6 amps. I don't know if it could keep up. I think you'd want at least 50?

[hobbyturnedobsession]

I was looking into that too. That's a decent size panel for space. Napa has golf cart batteries with 253 amp hour rating. That'd run it a while.

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[Becks_Bronco]

I was looking into that too. That's a decent size panel for space. Napa has golf cart batteries with 253 amp hour rating. That'd run it a while.

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Is that 6 or 12v? Running two of those 6v in series for 12v would run your fridge for years

[hobbyturnedobsession]

6v so 2 would be needed but they're not that big. Heavy though. I figure if I'm running the fridge I'll be camping and exploring in the bronco so recharging will happen while driving. For me I'd think as long as the battery can last over night I'd be alright. If you're camping in a spot and not driving 2 6 volts on a mount that you could pop in the rear or underneath would be a cool idea. That way no matter what you have power. You could use it for more stuff too.

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[Becks_Bronco]

6v so 2 would be needed but they're not that big. Heavy though. I figure if I'm running the fridge I'll be camping and exploring in the bronco so recharging will happen while driving. For me I'd think as long as the battery can last over night I'd be alright. If you're camping in a spot and not driving 2 6 volts on a mount that you could pop in the rear or underneath would be a cool idea. That way no matter what you have power. You could use it for more stuff too.

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A small battery cage with Anderson plugs would be ideal. Weight isn't as much of a problem as size, and even two of those batteries takes up only as much space as say a group 24. My biggest concern is being able to run the fridge for 24-48 hours at a time, and i bet that two of those golf cart batteries would be the ticket.

[hobbyturnedobsession]

I agree. Hell add a power center and an inverter you can use alot.

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[SteveG]

With a 4.5 amp draw you are only going to get about 11 hours out of an average group 24 battery...

That's what I was afraid of. That's not near as long as I'd hoped. I suppose I could add a solar panel but I'm not always planning on parking in the sun. In fact, it would be counterproductive to keeping a fridge cold....

Steve,

OLD thread, but i just recently bought a new battery for the Bronco, and will be running a fridge as well. 4.5amps is the peak startup draw, but draw half that or less on average while running.

Suuuuper delayed response but, oh well!

I think that post was referring to an old Norcold frige. I now have an ARB fridge and use Full River / Full Throttle batteries pretty much exclusively. We use them at work and have had great success with them.

Wilson has two Full Throttle batteries mounted in the back under the floor, outboard of the frame... TONS of reserve power for accidentally leaving things on....

I added an auxiliary battery to my Explorer that charges when the car is running and is isolated when the key is off. It works great. I'll grab the part number and post it soon.

[PaulW]

Now running two Odyssey Group 65s. One it wired to the big Dometic frig (40 Qt) for multi day trips like camping. It uses a standalone battery using the truck to keep it topped off when driving. For day trips I use a, much smaller Dometic 10 Qt that is connected to the truck electrical system. All these modern frigs will freeze or keep stuff at any temp. They use inverter compressors that only uses power when cooling is needed otherwise the compressor is just idling or off. Max draw is 7A at 12v. Of course battery consumption is a function of the ambient temperature. Both have low voltage cut off to save your battery at 3 voltage settings. Now days there are several brands and the most expensive is ARB. Many are imported from Australia like ARB and Dometic. Prices for all brands seem to have doubled in the last few years, so lots of Googling is required to get a good price.

BTW I just had two Deka batteries fail. One on the EB that has not been used for several years and always on a maintainer. The other one on the Jeep that is used constantly. Both Batteries (Intimidator) were less than 4 years old and were top of the line units.

Another good battery like the Odyssey is Northstar. These two AGM brands are not mass produced and supposedly use high purity lead with good quality controls.

The Group 65 Odyssey has a 145 minute reserve capacity which seems to be pretty good in comparison to others. So far, for a 4 day camping trip with moderate temperature days the frig never cycled off. My settings were 31 deg F and voltage cutoff set at 11.4v.

[VintageIronFab]

Still an Optima fan- optima is a battery that if you use it on a daily driver I doubt you’ll ever kill it- put it on a project and never let it run it just dies. I think their quality has come up in the past years because mine have been solid performers.

[SteveG]

Oh man. Optima shite the bed years ago.

[24hours]

I have had an ARB fridge since 2004. I’ve also switched from Optimas to Odyssey’s. I’ve had a couple of Die Hard Platinums (Also made by Enersys) when I couldn’t wait for an Odyssey to get delivered. I’m super happy with them and prefer the Made in USA” over the more expensive Chinese Full Throttle/River.

[PaulW]

About a battery choice for a Frig? Yup, I use an Odyssey Group 65 start battery 74AH @20 hr rate. A better choice would be a deep cycle unit like a Group 31 RV battery sold by many specialized battery companies. In my travel trailer I have a Lifeline deep cycle AGM that has 125AH @ 20 hr rate. Other battery companies have comparable RV units. The price for these deep cycle batteries are more than the Gp 65 start batteries. WIth these deep cycle units one could set the power cutoff at the low setting to get the most time out of the battery. If I remember correctly the frig low cutoff is 10.5V

[ntsqd]

If you are local to the 626 baja junkie (Kevin Davis) is a battery guy. Battery Sales Unlimited in Glendora...there is def an offroad discount.

I run yellow top.

Digging thru some of this old stuff I spot a name that I've not seen in a long while, although I know him better as the driver of the "Exxon Valdez." And here I was just telling someone at the last MORE race that story.

Since I've pulled this to the top again I'll mention that I blindly bought a Group 65 Odyssey for the Blanc-Oh's starting battery and am moving the rebuilt (someone else's steeker on it) Motorcraft "BLEM" cased Group 65 battery that it came with the truck to the 'house battery' position. Plan is to run the race radio, fridge, GPS, & who knows what else off of it. Have a Blue Sea dual sensing ACR jumpered across a BEP Marine battery bank switch. Maybe it'll get a solar panel at some future point. And maybe not.
So far, so good. Has two short-ish trips and one 1650 mile trip on it thus far.

[VintageIronFab]

I thought that was Joseph Hazelwood was the Valdez captain?

[ntsqd]

It's a very old RDC thread, you'll have to find it as I'm not qualified to tell the story.

[ChaseTruck754]

Back in the days of Road Map - no??

[ntsqd]

Road Map doesn't bring anything to mind. It is the story of one particular race that Kevin Davis won by shear consumption of any fluid available to keep his auto trans functioning.