Fluid leak out of new starter battery

[Scalf77]

Originally Posted by geoffff

I sometimes don't use the van for months, and I don't want the house battery to discharge while it's sitting parked in the garage, even if the appliances are all turned off. Should I not be doing this?

For many years I kept the van parked outside, and the solar would keep everything topped up so it wasn't an issue -- but it's dark in the garage.

-- Geoff

Left on a float charge, it does not matter if it is solar or a house charger a wet cell battery will loose water overtime, of course solar would take longer.
To combat this you can:
A) Change your starter or starters to a AGM type.

B) Disable the bidirectional Separator/ACR while at home charging for long times

C) Replace the bidirectional Separator/ACR with a unidirectional unit (or convert)

-greg

[daveb]

Geoff, I should have noted that until I went to all AGM [edit] starting types, I was going through wet cell starting batteries on a yearly or bi-yearly basis.
I really figure this was do to the constant solar charge and what Greg is talking about. Those so called maintenance free wet cell type batteries can be dried out by constant charging. It does depend on the charge rate and my guess how hot of weather the battery is subjected to. I have a fairly large array and live where 100*+ is the norm throughout the summer months. Even though my solar would fall to lower amp rates I just didn't like having two different batteries (wet & AGM's) banked together by the separator. In a perfect world the batteries would be the same type, size and age but that just isn't feasible. Having all AGM batteries for both house and battery systems make sense to me and since I switched to AGM starting batteries I have had much better success. YMMV. Many battery manufacture suggest to charge their AGM's as standard wet cell types. That is best discussed with the manufacture's tech support. But if I'm going to use a maintenance charger on a AGM battery I feel better purchasing a well made charger designed for AGM batteries. I've found those cheaper car chargers with an AGM setting to be junk and avoid those...JMO. Not that they won't work but I just would be skeptical about long term charging. Perhaps you might want to do as Greg suggests... to open the Separator (you can rig a switch on the Surepower units) and use two different types of high end maintenance type chargers. Just a thought. What a lot of people don't know is how bad their starting batteries condition is really in. We don't normally see a no-start issue until the vehicle is subjected to really cold temps, or something is left on like the head lights. Leaving a vehicle in a stored state is similar. Normally starting batteries only need a short burst of power to get the engine to crank over. Both of my standard batteries in my car and pickup have batteries that I've killed and recharged several times. They still start fine but I wouldn't trust them too long if the headlights were on w/o the engine running. I'm not sure why your new battery is leaking like that. It could be the battery as some have suggested but I'd make sure the alternator is working w/i parameters as well. Hopefully it's just a bad battery and they'll give you a new one that will work for a few more years.

Concerning AGM batteries, letting them sit below a 50% state of charge can do damage to them. An AGM battery left for long periods of time at an undercharged state will shorten the lives of most of them and you'll see it in the deep cycle type usage more than a starting situation. Some AGM starting batteries like those made by Odyssey can be taken to a lower state of charge but you'll pay a higher price for them. The reason I mentioned Sears Platinum is they are supposed to be a re-badged Odyssey. They are still expensive.
dave

[geoffff]

The other reason why I don't usually worry if my starter battery is weak is that I know I can always start the van with my house battery (which usually happens automatically via the separator). I realize it's probably not good for my house battery, but I've only done it <10 times.

-- Geoff

[arctictraveller]

Is there an advantage to using a deep cycle battery for the engine starter?

-- Geoff[/quote]

Actually there is a disadvantege. Deep cycle's are designed for lower amp draws for longer periods of time as opposed to your start battery which is designed to provide large amounts of current for short periods of time. Your current battery is probably fine so long as you charge it correctly. Your shore power charger is most likely over charging it, causing the electrolite to boil out. A sealed battery may not leak electrolite, but over charging will still cause a shorter life. Make sure your charger is tapering back to a float voltage of about 13.2 to 13.4 when fully charged, much more will cause the electrolite to bubble and eventually evaporate. If you want to upgrade to a different battery chemistry, just make sure you are charging it according to the manufacturers recomendations, anything less will shorten it's life.

[daveb]

It wasn't long after you purchased your van that SMB quit enabling the Surepower separator auto jump start mode. Mostly because it masks battery issues. They started adding a manual push button jump start switch at the dash. Sounds like you've never really had problems with it so no big deal leaving it as is. One method of checking the batteries per SMB is to pull the ground off the separator which disables it.
Good luck no matter how you go with your repairs Geoff.

[geoffff]

I am under the impression that I am aware of the times the house battery kicks in to start the van with the separator, in that in those cases I notice that all the gauges are "dead" when I turn the key on, but the van starts anyway when I turn it all the way to start. Then after starting, the speedometer and tach do a little dance (self-test sweep).

I once had my starter battery so dead that I needed to manually activate the separator with a jumper wire, as described in the manual.

The usual culprit is my accidentally leaving the radio switch next to the sink in the house-battery position after a camping trip. Doing this will always flatten my starter battery in under a week.

Thanks everyone for all this information. I always appreciate knowing what's going on, and what the tradeoffs are -- even if I decide not to change anything.

-- Geoff

[daveb]

Very possible and probably a difference with diesels. One bad reason in the case of the diesel engine is how much they pull off the starting batteries during the start coupled to the fact that the standard wire SMB used to connect from the house to the vehicle batteries is on the light side and was really intended to assist starting... not suggested to be used the only source to start a diesel.

I'm with you though, don't fix what's not FU.