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Originally Posted by cwilliams563
Looks good, I appreciate your information, thank you for sharing! When you relocate your battery, where are you moving it to? Which new battery are you looking at? Since you’ve been through this I’d like to consider your changes you’re planning on implementing. Seems like it’s a little bigger job and more parts than I was initially anticipating but like the additional and failsafes and like to do it right the first time.
I put a second battery in a truck years ago but all I did was run it in series and had enough room in the engine bay to butt it up against the original. Worked fine for what I needed it for.
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I would consider this to be somewhat of a minimum build for most people who "just want it to work".
My first dual battery build was in my Silverado. It was two batteries with a manually operated switch between them. There was a lot of "remembering" to do something, and when I forget, I still killed the starter battery or forgot to charge.
The only thing new I did was add the BlueSea ACR (inexpensive and good) to automate the switch task. When the car is running, both batteries are connected. When it is off, the 2nd is disconnected to preserve the starer.
The low voltage disconnect was an optional add to protect the health of the 2nd battery from draining it to the point of death.
Everything appears to have done it's job. I did this project in 2016 and both the originally batteries are still in the 4Runner. I didn't buy anything special either, just regular $100 starter batteries and didn't go too deep on discharge.
I don't know what my new plans are, but I plan on doing something new/different just to show what can be done.
I don't need a full size battery up front, I don't do any winching or activities that require high current cabling. In the 5 years I had this, the only thing I run that really needs a 2nd battery is the fridge/freezer.
I will most likely build a custom lithium battery pack that will fit under the fridge. Similar to a drawer system, but just a low profile base for the fridge that can be moved.
I am building this with my 5th gen in mind... One of my plans was to size the DC-DC charger to about 7-10 amps, which would allow the use of the factory rear existing 12v accessory plug. The primary goal being that I could use this as a "plug and play" dual battery setup that requires zero modification to the 4Runner and functions no different than an on-board install.
