Odyessy 1500 and more...Complete!

[TardisDeli]

Yes a battery isolator will work fine for charging your second battery But you will need a heavy duty solenoid to join your second battery for starting your van or a battery switch or jumper cables.The national Luna with the accessory control panel will do that also will the xantrex battery combiner. Cheers Jay

[tonydca]

If you are OK with simple and heavy-duty but not quite as foolproof as jfarsang's intelligent unit, you could install a marine-grade dual battery isolater.

I'll try to post a picture, but typically they are a large rotary knob with 4 positions at 12-,3-,6-,9-o'clock, usually labelled "Off", "1", "2", and "Both". You just manually select which is connected to your electrical system; pretty common on sailboats which usually have an engine battery and a play-toy battery.

Up to you to make sure you don't leave it on "Both" too long , but fairly simple to run an idiot light which blinks if switch is on "Both" and engine (alternator) not running.

Tony.

[tonydca]

Link to example. Isolator looks similar to the CanTire unit you referred to earlier:

http://www.jerrylabella.com/ship_shape2.htm

Tony.

[Green1]

Would this work?
http://www.canadiantire.ca/AST/browse/4 ... olator.jsp

That would work just fine

At present the Odyssey and the Auxiliary are in parallel until I can seperate them with said device or other.
Am I at risk of damaging the odessey in the interm?

yes, anytime you have 2 different batteries joined together like that there is risk of damaging one, the other, or both, this is why we always recommend to people to replace both batteries together, with identical ones, the weaker battery has a tendency to draw down the stronger one.

As for the isolation, there's another thing to think about, at what point do you want your batteries to be linked? Obviously when the engine is running you want everything linked together to charge both, but what about starting? imagine the following:
- you've been camping and using the auxiliary battery a lot, you've drained it pretty far down
- it's cold out and is going to be a relatively tough start
The last thing you want is to connect your dead auxiliary battery to the good starting battery at the same time as trying to crank over the engine, you'd be wasting a lot of badly needed electricity being dumped in to that weak battery.

now on the flip side, imagine a case where the main battery has been run down, now obviously having the 2 linked together would be a plus as it can give that extra oomph to get the vehicle going when the main battery is dead.

My recommendation is to hook up the isolator such that it joins the batteries only after the vehicle is actually running (take a feed from the oil pressure sensor, or the alternator) and carry a 6" jumper cable. this way you can always boost your vehicle from the other battery, but by default you don't draw down your strong starting battery with a week auxiliary battery until the engine is actually running to charge them both.

[Jester]

I always thought of batteries like of those fluorescent lights that work in pairs- You never change one, and always change with new ones in pairs.

If you separate the batts for a while, they get different wear, if you rejoin them down the road one may end up getting damaged as they will have different charging needs, thus shortening their life span.

[jessef]

If you'd like that National Luna setup, I have one that's out of our Delica that I can sell to you.

It's sitting on the shelf and I won't use it until early spring in which case I can buy a new one.

[fexlboi]

Install an Airtronic diesel cabin heater.

Have you actually used your Espar heater above 1500m above sea level? I contacted Espar and they said all their diesel heaters are not going to work very well in higher elevation without a special kit.
Where did you get your Airtronic from?

By the way Espar is a German company with the name J.Eberspächer GmbH & Co. I guess they renamed it for the international market to get no knots in the people's tongue

[White Mule]

Have you actually used your Espar heater above 1500m above sea level? I contacted Espar and they said all their diesel heaters are not going to work very well in higher elevation without a special kit.
Where did you get your Airtronic from?

I was in Banff over the Christmas. Overnight lows of -20c.
Total run time was 9 hours. I started with a medium temp and over 3 hours found it to be too hot. I dropped it down to low and went back to sleep. In the morning the Mule started without any battery loss and the fuel gauge had not moved. The auxilliary battery was reading just below normal. The National Luna solenoid was very useful.
I went snowshoeing for a couple of hours one day. The heater was running on low. When I returned to a warm van, I made a pot of espresso and life was good!
Banff has an elevation of 1384m-1463m asl. I have no higher elevations to report at this time.