Hi Svarky,
Any update on the Kings 60 Ah battery in the Atto 3?
What do you recommend for a charger? The spec sheet for the 60 Ah Kings suggests charging at 30A, but how low can you go? How often is the top balance required in your experience?
It has been working perfectly. No issues at all. I was checking the Victron smart battery monitor every few months and the voltage was very stable and had never dropped below 13V.
To be honest, I almost forgot about it and hadnāt done another top balance charge since August last year, until last week, I finally got around to doing another charge. The charger I used is only rated at 12A and it works no problem.
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Thanks for that.
Inspired by your experience Iāve gone ahead and installed the 60 Ah Kings LFP. After removing the lug clamps I just slightly flattened the terminals to get them to fit. TPU tiedown with a bit of old bike tyre to protect it from the sharp edges under the battery tray, I should upgrade to a webbing strap eventually.
I havenāt got a charger yet so I just installed it without charging (apparently they ship at 30% SoC), it looked like when I plugged the car into the 8A BYD portable EVSE that the reported charge rate was 1.3 kW rather than the 1.5 kW I normally see, I wonder if this means the other 200 W were going into the 12 V battery? It seemed to stay at 1.3 kW for a couple of hours before going up to the 1.5 kW level.
I had noticed that before replacing the old Pb battery that my car was suffering from pretty substantial self discharge (50% down to 38% when parked for 5 days). Is this a sign that the 12V battery had issues?
Hmmm, that could be the problem. If the old battery was cooked, it could be repeatedly trying to charge it. It should only drop by about 5% after 5 days, unless it was really cold.
What was the battery voltage exactly? Was it reaching 13.8V? You should really do a full charge sometime soon. You could just use any cheap 12V trickle charger to get it up to 14.4V and balance the cells (Just keep a close eye on it when it goes above 14.3V)
It usually is. But it can also be caused by leaving some OBD dongles connected.
I didnāt measure the voltage while the car was charging. I just measured it a couple of days later at 13.25 V.
Iāve got a charger on order, but in the meantime I just hooked up a very old charger designed for lead acid rated at 3.5 A. It seemed to be charging, steadily rising from 13.3-14.2 V but then it seemed to jump up to 15 V, which dropped (to 14ish, I canāt remember exactly) when I disconnected the charger.
When I disconnected the 12 V charger and reconnected it to the car the voltage dropped to 13.5 V.
When plugged in the EVSE, it went up to 13.75, and slowly rose to 13.78.
Is it best to disconnect the battery from the car to charge the 12 V? Iāve done so, but wasnāt sure if this was overkill.
good to know. I only bother with OBD on long trips when I want to use ABRP, Iām pretty sure I had unplugged it this time.
I bought a ā14.6 V LFP chargerā but it didnāt seem to sit nicely at 14.6 V. Does the kingās battery have an inbuilt BMS? What sort of V should I expect?
It will only reach 14.6V for a short amount of time (not like a lead-acid battery, which can stay at 14.6V for hours). Once full, LFP cells will basically stop charging completely.