Well I've been planning this project for a while. Building the bracket for about a month and finally over the holiday's had time to put it all together. I used two PC1500 Odyssey's, National Luna Split Charger and a National Luna Dual Battery Controller. Most will very quickly realize where I got the components which should probably lead to my motivation for this project. But the reality is that dual batteries give me as much a warm and fuzzy as the winch does when travelling alone. Back to the build. I don't have pictures of the battery box/bracket yet as I forgot to take them. I need to make a small adjustment to some things in the coming weeks so I'll take a picture at that time. First thing to note is that the Odyssey batteries are physically bigger than the Optima's, well at least the bodies are. Since the Optima's are true Spiral Cell and Odysseys aren't the Odyssey is rectangular in the body. So fitting dual Odyssey's in the DII is no small feat. They literally barely fit! I have less than one inch of clearance from the hood insulation when it's closed. On the back side of the battery tray I built what initially started out as a heat shield for the batteries, but quickly becam a nice mounting location for the National Luna Solenoid and the main Fuse Box for my auxillary wiring. Onto the wiring. After some consultation with Paul over at Equipt (Our Distributor) on what to put where it was decided that the winch should come off of the main battery (Right) due to it's power draw, all the accessories come off of the auxillary battery (Left). They are interconnected with a 4GA power wire which according to all the wiring guidelines should easily handle over 120 amps of power at once due to it's short length. The Solenoid is rated at 85A so I should be ok. The two grounds are connected together but in such a way that if either ends up with a faulty connection to it's battery the other battery should still have a good connection. 


You can't really read the display since the flash washed it out, but it's showing the voltage of each battery here. 
|