Ranger Mods

Mine seems to have been fairly consistent. I've had as low as 76% after sitting for a day with the dashcam recording in parking mode and maxed out at 83% as mentioned.

Maybe my school of thinking is outdated but constantly undercharging a battery will eventually lead to lower capacity and a shorter life of the battery won't it? I can't understand why they'd want to keep it constantly undercharged.

I have not researched the chemistry of a calcium battery so can not answer it. Feel free to research. Also do not assume that is is 83% as it could be 90%. When a battery is replaced you are meant to re-sync the BMS as above mine changed and I didn't even run the vehicle.

How do you sync the BMS?

Forscan, service functions, Battery Monitoring System Reset.

Thanks. I'll give that a try and see if anything changes. Probably won't get a chance until the weekend but I'll give it at least another week of monitoring afterwards and see if it ever gets over 83%

Ok the answers.

From Ford engineers. 80% SOC is the ideal and is what they use for longevity of the battery.

For all those that enable dual battery mode, I wouldn't. Fried BCM's were the engineers concerns and also the fact ( this is in short ) you are telling the BMS that you want 160% SOC. End result is it basically doubles it.

Ideally the BMS should still not overcharge and boil the battery but this the bottom line.

Now there will be slight variations on displayed figures depending on if you have used a charger without BMS connected, how charged the battery was when the BCM was first initialised in the car etc. but apsilon I would say 83% is spot on if you go by the above information.

Choice is yours and is why your dealer will not enable unless you have 2 batteries.

Thanks for the info mate. Might have to install a second battery to get "normal" reserve capacity if the battery can't be charged to full. Not urgent but I'll have to give some thought to where I go from here.

Apsilon and Gerry,

If you want to try the adjustable SOC I had implemented in Forscan then give me a heads up. This is not for general consumption at this time ( my choice ) but I will have it re enabled in a later release if it works as expected.

PM me if you want to try the changes.

I'm pretty flat out ATM so will pass for now. Maybe in a couple of weeks. Thanks though.

Hi Stewart,

Thanks for the opportunity to test out the adjustable SOC options. I changed mine the other day to 14 volts (down from Ford's default of 16 volts).

Yesterday I travelled about 400kms to Adelaide and then back in the dark. On the way down in the daylight my Scangauge was consistently showing around 14.2 volts. Note that while I have a second battery charged by a DC charger, I had no load on it whatsoever. Interestingly, when travelling home with headlights and on some stretches high beam and LED spotties on, the voltage was a steady 13.1 volts, which I thought was a bit strange.

I'll be heading off for a week or two with the van this Sunday, so I'll do a bit more monitoring. I'll also have the Engel fridge running 24/7 as well so the second battery will be active.

Not sure if I can dial up battery SOC% on the Scangauge, but that would also be interesting to monitor.

Cheers

GerryP wrote: ↑Thu Sep 21, 2017 9:28 pm Not sure if I can dial up battery SOC% on the Scangauge, but that would also be interesting to monitor.

XGauge details for SOC is here: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=251

I've been watching that for a while. On single battery mode it doesn't go above 83%, at least for me.

Thanks apsilon, I'll program that in and see what it tells me while we're on the road next week.

Cheers

Remember headlights are just are just a resistor as are electric motors etc and any resistor is going to drop battery voltage. The adjustable SOC is just a test and a fair amount of time is needed to see if it will bring a desired outcome.

Great to hear it settles at around 83%, just what the Ford engineers asked for.

Is there a SOC for obdlink ??

Ok, update on SOC with forscan set to 14 volts for dual battery mode. I was on the road most of today, covered some 450km and had the engel running off battery number 2, which has a dc charger keeping it alive.

Battery volts consistently on 14.1 to 14.2 with SOC rising from 80% at the start to 88% at the end of the day. Main battery voltage at rest after an hour was 12.5v. Would've been nice to see that a little higher, but I'll see how it rolls over the next few days.

Next you will have to drop it down to 13 and see where everything sits.

Hi Stewart,

I have a dual battery system with the Redarc 1230 BMS (S2) and a 100AH LIthium battery in the canopy. I also tow a camper with 2 x 100AH AGM's and a Ctek D250S in the camper, fed straight from the main battery / alternator as well.

Would you recommend "disabling smart charge" in this setup? I haven't noticed any charging issues of either the 2nd battery in the canopy, or the camper. Went touring for 3 weeks last year and it all seemed to go ok.

I notice that Ctek now make a D250SA which is supposed to handle "smart alternators". Are these the way to go in these newer vehicles?

Terry

Hi Terry,

I think my 120Ah battery is about 4 years old now. I only use a normal solenoid and still get at least 4 days from my fridge without starting the vehicle, so I say just leave it how it is.

If you have issues with van batteries not lasting as long as you want then or should then swap out your D250S to the D250SA.

Hi Stewart,
I was just wondering if you have an update on your experiments on setting specific battery voltages?
I would like to install a Voltage Sensitive Relay which disconnects when the voltage drops below 12.7v and cuts in at 13.3v so that my van won't drain the car's battery when the engine is not running.

Sorry Gesneriad, I do not. At the moment I drive 20km each way to work so I wouldn't see what I need to see to make a decision. Gerry or others that have tried may be able to chime in.

I run one of these http://www.intervolt.com/product/electr ... -isolator/ which is programmable and may do what you want. They make some nice gear. I will probably buy their DC-DC at a later stage.

Hi,
I have set mine to 14v and it seems to run around 14.2 mostly with SOC around 85%. I did plan on setting it to 13v at some stage just to see the difference but I've been rather slack.

There's virtually no load on my second battery, which charges via a redarc bcdc with solar, unless I run the fridge.

I'm running dual battery mode mainly because without it enabled my battery voltage would cycle between 12v and 16v depending on what the accelerator pedal was doing... not real good for the battery.

saeb wrote: ↑Sat Nov 18, 2017 1:25 pm Hi Terry,

I think my 120Ah battery is about 4 years old now. I only use a normal solenoid and still get at least 4 days from my fridge without starting the vehicle, so I say just leave it how it is.

If you have issues with van batteries not lasting as long as you want then or should then swap out your D250S to the D250SA.

Thanks Stewart, sorry I forgot to get back to this post. I got about 7 years out of my camper batteries, before replacing them late last year, which I think is pretty good life, right? Most of the time they are on float with a CTEK AC charger in the garage.

I would be very happy with 7 years.

Hi Stewart,

I've been trying to understand why my D250S works well at all with the Ranger's BMS and dual battery mode not enabled (and the evidence is that it does). The D250S has a cut in voltage of 13.1V and a cut out voltage of 12.8V. The D250SA, on the other hand, has a cut in of 11.8V and a cut out of 11.4V, which, based on what you've said about the Ranger's BMS, makes sense. So, in theory, the D250S won't charge when the main battery is "full", because the alternator should "turn off" and drop below 12.8V right? This is assuming dual battery mode not enabled.

About the only way I can think the D250S works, is either when:
a) the main battery's SOC is low and the alternator is charging it.
b) the main battery is not low but the second battery is thristy and still pulling 20A, and this causes the whole system's voltage to drop low enough that the Ranger's BMS thinks it still needs to charge the battery.

Does this make sense or am I off base?

BTW, I don't have any of these concerns / questions with the Redarc BMS, as I've wired an ignition trigger and set it to that. Takes all the guess work out of it, and I think CTEK should have done the same thing with their charger, rather than just lowering the trigger voltage. The Redarc manual doesn't say what voltage their Auto setting kicks in at. I must ask them.

UPDATE: Or read the manual...... Redarc cut in 13.2V and cut out is 12.7V when set to auto. So very similar to the Ctek D250S. I changed mine to ignition trigger a while back, as I flattened the main battery accidentally once (left the keys in the ignition), and when I tried to charge the main battery, the BMS kicked in and dragged all my charge on the main. While it was on auto (for about a year, I never had a problem with the Redarc keeping the canopy battery charged, so again, it must have been "fooling" the smart alternator somehow into keeping the voltage above 12.7V.

I guess the conclusion here is you really / definitely don't need to enable dual battery mode when running a DC to DC charger that has a 12.7 / 12.8V cut out, and the D250SA with it's lower cut in / cut out voltages is a waste of additional coin over the D250S.

Ok, so I did a bit more analysis and testing and have to withdraw the conclusions above. I did quite a few tests and grabbed Forscan data and analysed it. Essentially, when the battery is at target SOC (approx 80% or above), the alternator generally puts out 3 different voltages:

12.8V (or no charge). This tends to be the output at idling under roughly 800 RPM. This voltage would cause most voltage sensing DC chargers to stop, unless they are a "smart alternator" charger with lower thresholds or have an ignition trigger that is wired. Press the accelerator pedal and push some RPM's, and the voltage reliably jumps to 13.1V.

13.1V. This tends to be the voltage when accelerating / coasting and RPM above roughly 800 RPM. This should be high enough to trigger most standard DC to DC chargers, depending on how much voltage drop you get between the main battery and your charger.

14.0V. For some reason, deceleration triggers this voltage. Not entirely sure why. Maybe to help with braking?

So if you're out on the highway coasting along, you're probably going to get a decent charge in from a "standard" DC charger with the Ranger's smart charger enabled. Probably explains why to date I've had no problems with a D250S in my camper, as I'm generally out on the highway with it when it's alternator charging. If you're doing a lot of stopping at traffic lights, voltage is going to drop below threshold and it will stop charging.

It does appear the BMS is taking other input from the ECU, such as RPM / throttle, in deciding what voltage to output, probably in support of other systems like brakes.

I also did a test where I drained my battery to around 65% SOC, and then started the car. As expected, the alternator thumped in over 90 amps initially at 14V. The current slowly reduced to around 20 amps at 75%, and then at 79%, the alternator dropped to 12.8V and stopped charging.

Next test is to test what happens with the BMS disabled. I expect the alternator will just pump out 14V full time.