A lot of people who are looking to live on the road seek the off grid lifestyle because of the freedom and the ability to camp without hook ups. An alternator will not charge a dead battery because alternators take current to excite the field coil to make everything work.
Dual Battery Setups
How to hook up second battery to alternator. The most effective way to charge an additional battery from a single alternator is by use to a split charging setup. This can involve several possible methods like crimping or screwing the wire to a connector terminal. Step 9 make sure the battery is connected negative to ground and the positive to the starter or starter solenoid figure 2. On the opposite end of the fuse the alternator wires to attach a wire and run this to the post marked in on the battery isolator. Trace the wire from the battery post on the alternator marked b or b to your cars fuse box. Walk through of the steps we took to install a secondary deep cycle battery in a 2002 gmc astro van for powering additional appliances and electronics including mini fridge fan and inverter for.
The enerdrive vsr battery isolator has two main cable posts underneath it these are for connecting the main positive battery link cables to so here the one with the red dot on the stud this is where you connect the cable coming from the mega fuse on the startingcranking battery and the other post is for the link cable that is running to the auxiliary battery positive mega fuse. Connect the longer wire to your second batterys positive terminal using the same procedure as with the other terminals. The benefits of this system over a solenoid combiner or dc to dc charger are that you arent limited to 40 amps of current so you can charge any size battery of any type. You want to have a fully charged battery when doing the next steps. Connect that battery terminal to the electrical connector of the device it will power stereo subwoofer etc. The other two wires go to the positive terminal of batery if you cant get the thing to spin fast enough to generate electricity try addin a resistor between the.
You can buy kits from various sources and they are common amongst both campers where a leisure battery is maintained and competition audio enthusiasts ice cars whereby several heavy duty batteries to drive additional amplifiers make up part of the cars sound system. Alternator battery connection if you are looking to get an off grid lifestyle without the off grid price an alternator battery connection might be the best option for you. It involves adding a second alternator on a bracket in the engine bay and running wires from that second alternator into the van or to wherever the extra batteries are. Usualy there are 4 wires one wire is from the casing which goes to the negative terminal of the battery then out of the other 3 wires one is the field wire which you should connect to positive but make sure you put a basic on off switch turn switch on when starting alternator turn off once running and leve off when not in use.