Second Battery on chassis

Hi all

I'm fairly new here and from all my reading I've decided to start my d40 build with a duel battery set up. Because I carry 3 motorbikes in the tray I don't want to use the tray to house the battery. I've read that some people put them on the chassis on drivers side. After a trip to arb and tjm I've decided to build it my self. Has anyone else build there own ? Arb wanted $270 and tjm wouldn't sell me one because they had a customers heat shield come loose and create a circuit on top of the battery. Battery decided to swell, expand and explode.

This is also worries me. Any thoughts or contributions would be greatly appriciated !

Personally I'd still put it in the tub. You won't be using the space over the wheel arch for motorbikes and it just happens to fit a deep cycle battery nicely.

iv put a box to house my second battery and 240v inverter in between the wheel arch and tailgate and still get 2 bikes in the back no worries, maybe even 3 if i put the middle bike in backwards

I guess you must have a tray if you carry 3 motorbikes?

I had one in an alloy toolbox under the tray on my king cab, worked really well. Have a look in my garage

justdrinkbeer said:

I guess you must have a tray if you carry 3 motorbikes?

I had one in an alloy toolbox under the tray on my king cab, worked really well. Have a look in my garage

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Nah I've got style side. I've got the rack that goes across the back wall of the tub. The middle bike sits back 30cm to allow for no bar rubbing.

I will look in your garage and may be able to incorporate that into my build if I go ahead with it. Thanks

Old.Tony said:

Personally I'd still put it in the tub. You won't be using the space over the wheel arch for motorbikes and it just happens to fit a deep cycle battery nicely.

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When I have 3 or even 2 the foot pegs sit above the wheel arch. Why couldnt Nissan just leave some room in the engine bay like every other manufacturer ? Haha

ONLOCK said:

iv put a box to house my second battery and 240v inverter in between the wheel arch and tailgate and still get 2 bikes in the back no worries, maybe even 3 if i put the middle bike in backwards

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This might work, have you got pics or link to a previous post ? If I search the forum I would get hundred results for duel batteries.

Hey guys first post so hope this works! haha

I had the same problems as you I didn't want it in the tub!
I have mounted a 10'' 80ah battery to the underside of the tub floor on the passenger side just behind the fuel tank. Made up a cradle out of some 40x40x3mm angle iron, if ya handy with a welder its very easy to make! great place to put it, did abit of corrigation work on a resent NT trip and it hung in there fine. If ya keen on some pics to understand it a bit better let me know i'll try and post some.
hope this helps Widge.

Widge87 said:

Hey guys first post so hope this works! haha

I had the same problems as you I didn't want it in the tub!
I have mounted a 10'' 80ah battery to the underside of the tub floor on the passenger side just behind the fuel tank. Made up a cradle out of some 40x40x3mm angle iron, if ya handy with a welder its very easy to make! great place to put it, did abit of corrigation work on a resent NT trip and it hung in there fine. If ya keen on some pics to understand it a bit better let me know i'll try and post some.
hope this helps Widge.

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Yeah mate i'd be keen to see that, got a tub now so keen to get things out of the way

Ok so heres a few pics of my second battery setup. Its bolted to the tub with counter sunk bolts, in one of the pics you can see them going through the tie-down rack the other 2 bolts are hidden under the tub liner, they have some nice big washers made from 40x3mm flat bar to spread the load. the redarc isolator is mounted next to the start battery in engine bay. hope the pics help any other question feel free to ask!
Cheers Widge

thanks for the post and the picks. i wanted to do this for my second battery. it looks like the terminals are at the side as opposed to the standard top mounted terminal/posts, is that how the battery is meant to sit?
what sort of battery is it?

cheers. nathan

The battery is an Ultimate sealed AGM and yes it is mounted on its side. When i bought the battery, i was told that it could be mounted in any position. It has been installed for a good 6 months now and is still working fine.
Cheers Widge

Widge87 said:

The battery is an Ultimate sealed AGM and yes it is mounted on its side. When i bought the battery, i was told that it could be mounted in any position. It has been installed for a good 6 months now and is still working fine.
Cheers Widge

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Thanks Widge87, looks good ! ill have a look under there tonight.

sorry forgot about this completly, heres some pics of how iv got mine setup in the tub of my st.

+second battery

i like where you fitted the battery but how do you charge it ? i have a 2010 d40 and it wont charge even the breakaway battery in the van because the alternator shuts down when the ecu tells it to and you only end up with 12.2volts. I had to remove the redarc and fit an isolater switch. any ideas would help

12.2V represents a battery that's longing for a charge, no wonder the Redarc wasn't providing power.

I wonder what the rules are for inverting the 12V supply to 240V and then using a charger dedicated to the breakaway battery? I've not had ANY issues with inverted power, always get enough power to drive the fridge, and the battery charger in the caravan (and another battery charger in the tub).

Old.Tony said:

I wonder what the rules are for inverting the 12V supply to 240V and then using a charger dedicated to the breakaway battery? I've not had ANY issues with inverted power, always get enough power to drive the fridge, and the battery charger in the caravan (and another battery charger in the tub).

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There's nothing wrong with it "rules-wise" Tony, it's just a very unefficient way to do it.

It will give you a better charge on your battery and extend its life.

I would be interested to know what C-Tek think of it though, you are basically running their charger on a modified sine wave or square wave rather than a pure sine wave, wonder if that effects it at all.

I think the 240V input of the C-Tek is immediately rectified by a switchmode power supply. If that's the case, we're talking bridge rectifier with some decent caps feeding the roughly 300-340V output into a step-down transformer switched by a transistor fed by the output on the other side of the transformer. This kind of circuit should take a square wave or modified sine wave and simply produce a nice steady DC output.

Admittedly I haven't cracked my C-Tek open to check this, but I'm sure I was reading it somewhere that the C-Tek employed this sort of primary power conversion to ensure that the device could be used from generators etc. They've changed the C-Tek site and a lot of the information has been removed, which is a shame.

Yeah I noticed that about the website too, there was a lot of good info there before.

There is still some on the international website www.ctek.com