Ironman 4x4 Dual Battery Kit

SAR_Squid79

Explorer
I'm interested in this 275 amp Dual Battery Kit from Ironman 4x4.

...but you can't buy it from the website. I talked to the Ironman guys at the Overland Expo, but I just assumed I could buy straight from them... Are any of our sponsors dealers for Ironman?
 
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SAR_Squid79

Explorer
**EDIT**

I thought I remembered reading a recent article about Ironman 4x4 in 4WD Toyota Owner Magazine. I looked in the January/February issue, and found it! CAMEL 4X4 is Ironman 4x4's exclusive distributor for the USA & Canada.

Ironman 4x4 275-amp Dual Battery Kit is $335 from Camel 4x4!

I LIKE IT! :elkgrin:
I think it's got my name written all over it! :safari-rig:
 

wrcsixeight

Adventurer
Nice rig! Glad you could answer your own question.:sombrero:

I've been looking at the product you have linked to(the 275 amp product). It is kind of neat how it will use both batteries until they both reach 12.2 volts, then disconnect the engine battery from auxiliery loads as long as they are wired to the Aux battery.

The only issue I could see with this is that a battery, well rested, reading 12.2 volts would indicate that it is 50% charged. Starting batteries really do not like being drawn down to this level on a regular basis. So you might be replacing the starting battery more often than you like. But depending on the load applied to the battery especially by the cycling of a compressor fridge, 12.2 might be reached before the engine battery is really down to 50%.

I don't know that when the engine battery's voltage recovers above 12.2 when removed from the load(and it will), if the product will parallel the batteries again.

You could negate this by using an oversized deep cycle or dual purpose as your starting battery.

One other think I'll nitpick is calling the Dual battery LED remote device, a monitor. It is a simple voltage monitor, not an amp hour monitor. While Amp hour monitor give a fairly accurate reading in terms of State of Charge. Voltage monitors can be very misleading if not just outright wrong.

A rested battery, one that has not had any charging or discharging currents applied, for anywhere from 4 to 14 hours, can yield a fairly accurate state of charge by a voltage reading.

Just after running the engine, the batteries will have a surface charge, and a simple voltmeter will read 12.8+ volts for many hours afterward even under load, despite the fact that the battery could still be at or below 80% state of Charge.

For example, after a couple of cloudy days and much Laptop usage, my batteries were drawn down to 78 amp hours from full. After a full day of sun, the amp hour monitor read I was up to 18 hours from full, yet my current battery voltage, after using 30 more amp hours since sundown is still reading 12.8. This is under a 4.1 amp load.

The batteries according to my Amp hour monitor are at 78%, 51 amp hours from full. Yet the voltage is still 12.8.

Having only a voltage monitor reading 12.8 volts might trick me into thinking the batteries are still nearly fully charged when they are far from it.

I'm sure the product as designed and sold will fulfill it's purpose of allowing you to always start your vehicle.

If you are concerned about maximum alternator recharging, and accurate battery state of charge monitoring, then that product is lacking, and expensive.
 

alan

Explorer
In Australia Ironman dual battery systems were recalled because they were faulty, not sure if this is the same model.
 

ldivinag

Adventurer
One other think I'll nitpick is calling the Dual battery LED remote device, a monitor. It is a simple voltage monitor, not an amp hour monitor. While Amp hour monitor give a fairly accurate reading in terms of State of Charge. Voltage monitors can be very misleading if not just outright wrong.

so what monitor do you use?
 

UK4X4

Expedition Leader
the one on e-bay listed last week here on expo for 150 usd comes with ironman labled instructions !
 

Rando

Explorer
Wrcsixeight is absolutely right. The only time that a voltage based 'battery monitor' can give you an accurate sense of your battery capacity is when your battery hasn't been charged, or loaded, for 6-8hrs. As such the battery monitors that come with most dual battery systems (even the uber expensive ones) really don't do what they are advertised to do, except possibly first thing in the morning if your fridge is off and you haven't switched on your coffee pot yet. Really the only way to know the capacity of your battery while you are using it is to do current accounting. You need to measure both the current into your battery and the current out at all times and keep a running tally of how many ampere hours you have used and how many you have put back in. I couldn't find a good off the shelf the battery controller with a real monitor, so I ended up building my own:
http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=414590

The only other caveat is that the current integrating monitors are subject to drift over the long term. If your current measurement is a little off (which at some level they all are) and you integrate this signal for weeks, your calculated SOC will end of being majorly off as it will include the accumulated sum of these errors. I try and counter this by watching for times when the battery has been rested for 8 hours, and then using the open circuit voltage to recalibrate the SOC.

Another thing to note is that the open circuit voltage to SOC relationship is different for different type of batteries. For an Odyssey VRLA, 12.84 V (at 25C) is fully charged, whereas for a generic flooded cell 12.65 V is fully charged. SO even if your voltage based monitor does happen to read correctly, it will suggest your Odyssey is fully charged when it is really only at 80% SOC.

I also think that the dual battery kits are rather overpriced for what they are. My DIY system probably costs on the order of $125 to build, and does much more than any of the commercially available systems.

so what monitor do you use?
 

Rando

Explorer
One last thing, the concept of the 'intelligent solenoid' is also somewhat flawed when it comes to charging both batteries. The idea is generally that the solenoid monitors the voltage of you main (starting) battery, and when it reaches the 'fully charged voltage' usually about 13.2V, it switches your aux battery into the circuit. My experience is that with a decent alternator, your main battery will reach 13.2V almost as soon as the engine starts. This is also verified based on the charging curves for a LA battery, which show 2.2V /cell at the start of the charging cycle. The issue with this, is that if you have an auxiliary battery which is much larger than your starting battery, and you aren't driving for long enough to charge both, your starting battery will not ever get fully charged as a majority of the current will go to your aux battery which will have a much lower internal resistance. This can lead to the premature death of your starting battery (as it did for just this reason on a friends VW Westy). Some systems also have a 2-5 minute delay before switching in the aux battery, which helps somewhat, but doesn't alleviate the problem all together.

From a charging standpoint, using a regular (and much cheaper) solenoid driven by an ACC line in your car is essentially as good as the much more expensive intelligent solenoids. Particularly if you have a manual override switch in the cab which will allow you to leave the batteries isolated for the first 30 minutes or so of driving if you know that the main battery is at a low SOC.
 

wrcsixeight

Adventurer
I agree with everything that Rando has said.

My alternator is quite a distance from my auxiliary batteries, utilizing the too thin stock wiring until it meets up with the 12 feet of 2 awg I installed to reach the manual battery switch. Even if the AUX batteries are fairly well depleted, the voltage rises above 14.2 almost instantly after the engine starts. A smart solenoid would be no more effective than the dumb one at 1/5 the price.

Also due to surface charge, I would prefer not having my batteries tied together for hours after I stop my engine. A dumb solenoid would instantly separate the 2. The smart solenoid could keep them paralleled for hours afterward.

I don't want my engine battery supplying any amps to my aux systems. But don't use a solenoid, I prefer a Manual switch. If I forget to isolate the engine battery, then I could be drawing amps from all 3 batteries, but I would have had to forgot for many many sunless days before that could leave me stranded.

My battery monitor is designed to work in concert with my Solar charge controller. A 500 amp shunt has to be wired into the Negative Cables. Nothing can directly go to the battery negative but the cables from the battery side of the shunt. Well it can, but the current would not be measured.

Here is my Battery monitor. I do not have it dashboard mounted, but can see it if I look over my shoulder when driving.
wind-sun_2100_45349008

http://store.solar-electric.com/ipredidi.html

This is my solar charge controller:
http://store.solar-electric.com/sbchco2512vm.html

Over on the RV forums, one guy made his own Battery monitors from units designed for RC planes/cars/boats. It does not use a shunt but a hall effect sensor to measure current. It only measures current in one direction, so two must be used for amps in and amps out,but it can be done for ~55$.
Here is a link:
turnigy-meter.jpg

http://www.rv.net/cforum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/23660840.cfm

Here is another product which claims to measure battery capacity using an all together different method.:http://www.amazon.com/Argus-BB-DCM12-300-Battery-100-300Ah-Batteries/dp/B001DCYRA8/ref=sr_1_5/191-7378327-2504630?ie=UTF8&s=automotive&qid=1272139204&sr=8-5

I do not know how well they work.
 
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wrcsixeight

Adventurer
My old batteries were wally world everstarts that were labeled deep cycle, trolling,marine,RV. They are dual purpose batteries, really just a starting battery slightly more tolerant of deeper discharges. They seem to have had a fully charged resting voltage of 12.8.

One of those batteries shorted a cell and became useless at month 13. The second one failed at month 32. It would read 12.8v but fall to 10.5v when any load over 0.5 amps was applied. The third is now in my engine compartment.

I replaced those 2 group 27 "deep cycles" with some true Deep Cycles.

Some Crown group 27 true Deep cycle batteries. These seem to have a fully charged resting voltage of between 12.60 and 12.65.

But the surface charge lasts much longer, and even after that has burnt off, They hold a much higher voltage overnight and with more of a load than the Everstarts ever did.

I notice that AGM batteries seem to have higher fully charged resting voltages.

Most, but not all TRUE Deep cycle batteries do not list a CCA rating, only an amp hour reading.

Know what you are buying and using. There is a significant difference in longevity and performance between the 2.

True deep cycle batteries can cost 40% more, whether they last 40% longer is up for debate. IMO it is worth it to have Known quality versus something that was built to wally world's price demand.
 

wrcsixeight

Adventurer

A simple voltmeter like this
410P7ZJHZVL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
does not indicate a batteries state of charge unless the battery has not been charged or discharged for many hours. And then, If the battery manufacturer gives a resting voltage state of charge chart for a particular battery, you can be accurate to within 10%.

Keep in mind some batteries' fully charged resting voltages are 12.8, some are 12.6 and some AGM's can be 13.0. Unless you are sure what a fully charged resting voltage is for a certain battery, it does not tell you much at all in terms of battery state of charge.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the wiring leading to many ciggy plug outlets can be very thin. The bean counters win again. There can be a significant amount of voltage drop over the long thin wires leading ultimately from the battery through the multiple connectors and wiring harnesses until it reaches the ciggy plug. This is why some inverters that plug in to ciggy plugs do not work properly. Too much voltage drop over too thin of wiring.

The only good that the linked voltmeter will do on a non rested battery is tell you if the alternator is working, and if a battery is fully dead, and possibly if your alternator can keep up with your lights, stereo, blower motor, or anything else you are asking your vehicle to power while the engine is running. And that is assuming that it is accurate. A 3 dollar voltmeter from harbor freight would be much more useful.

But it is just as effective as those that come with these 350$ isolator systems, at least for the engine battery, which is not saying much.
 

SAR_Squid79

Explorer
Bump!

Does anybody know anything about this Ironman 4x4 dual battery kit? I can't really find any reviews online... I really like this kit - but I'm torn between taking a chance on this one or getting the National Luna kit which has worked great for tons of ExPo'ers.

275_amp_dual_battery_kit.jpg
 

Maximus Ram

Expedition Leader
If it was me and I had the $$, I would go with the proven unit.
Starting to learn in my "old" age, do it once and do it right....
 

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