sturgillk
Observer
Hello All! I've been studying the contents of this forum for several years now (probably more than I ever studied back in college) and I'm finally getting into the groove of posting some things.
I followed the general idea of the $50 isolated dual battery set up thread (although it somehow ended up costing me more than $50....) but I'm not sure I've done it completely right. You see, I drive a Disco I that (as far as I can tell) does not have an ignition switched fuse under the hood. So..... I found out that some of the Toyota folks wire their solenoids up to an "alternator good" fuse, which only provides power after the alternator starts pumping out enough juice to charge the battery.
My secondary battery is connected by 1/0 welding cable to the starting battery with a 500 amp continuous solenoid and 100 amp fuses. The negative trigger wire of the solenoid is connected to the negative of my starting battery and the positive trigger wire is.... at the moment... wired to what I believe is the "alternator good" output post of my alternator. Directly. (For those familiar with the alternator on a 4.0L Land Rover engine, I've tapped onto the middle post that only shows 12v after the engine has been started. The upper post goes to the battery and the lower post suspiciously only shows ~6v when it's running.)
At the moment, I can think of at least one thing I need to do and that's fuse the wire between the solenoid and the alternator. But I'm hoping to hear from the collective masses as to whether I've A) channeled pure genius, B) kludged what is a perfectly good tutorial on drinking beer and isolating batteries or C) created a death trap.
Any and all input/feedback/derision/guidance would be greatly appreciated.
I followed the general idea of the $50 isolated dual battery set up thread (although it somehow ended up costing me more than $50....) but I'm not sure I've done it completely right. You see, I drive a Disco I that (as far as I can tell) does not have an ignition switched fuse under the hood. So..... I found out that some of the Toyota folks wire their solenoids up to an "alternator good" fuse, which only provides power after the alternator starts pumping out enough juice to charge the battery.
My secondary battery is connected by 1/0 welding cable to the starting battery with a 500 amp continuous solenoid and 100 amp fuses. The negative trigger wire of the solenoid is connected to the negative of my starting battery and the positive trigger wire is.... at the moment... wired to what I believe is the "alternator good" output post of my alternator. Directly. (For those familiar with the alternator on a 4.0L Land Rover engine, I've tapped onto the middle post that only shows 12v after the engine has been started. The upper post goes to the battery and the lower post suspiciously only shows ~6v when it's running.)
At the moment, I can think of at least one thing I need to do and that's fuse the wire between the solenoid and the alternator. But I'm hoping to hear from the collective masses as to whether I've A) channeled pure genius, B) kludged what is a perfectly good tutorial on drinking beer and isolating batteries or C) created a death trap.
Any and all input/feedback/derision/guidance would be greatly appreciated.