Hi All…

Im finding the non-lithium lightweight race batteries very impractical.

i find if the car has not been driven for at least 1 week. The battery is dead.

other than the OEM items on the car e.g Clocks, radio, ECU etc. i have an alarm & immobiliser.

at this stage i am not leaning towards any issues e.g parasitic drains.

Does this 1 week duration sound about right?

 

I used to have a pc680 and it would regularly sit a week or so. I never had issues with it. I got rid of it only because I didnt like the slow cranking from the battery.
I replaced it with an oem size miata battery, and the cranking is back to normal.

 

what brand/model battery are you running? you can get one of those chargers that you just keep plugged in, it is for motorcycles and it is made to be plugged in all of the time

 

I relocated to trunk and run a full sized red top Optima

 

The one week duration sounds right. Parasitic drains can kill any battery. I have a lithium-iron SHORAI LFX36A3 battery that can output 540 CCA. The longest I went without killing the battery is one year. I did this by turning on the Evo and letting it idle for 10 mins every week.

The longest I have left the Evo not running has been two weeks. I noticed that if I had accessories that turn on when I start the Evo they would parasitcally drain the battery faster when the car was off.

 

Do Race cars worry about draining their batteries? No they disconnect them.
What are you going to do next? Install a race clutch and complain about it not driving like a lexus?

 

I run the ETS mini battery kit on my IX and it uses a CSB battery. I've had it on the car since the end of March and I haven't had a single issue with it. I don't drive the car that much, maybe once a week if that so in between drives I keep it hooked up to a Schumacher trickle charger on the 2 amp setting.

 

If you don't mind me saying, that i am not an IDIOT!.

It is obvious there is a trade-off for everything.

All i said that it is "impractical" and... IT IS!

This is a friendly forum discussion, if everyone is a know-it-all or pessimistic like yourself.. there there would be no point posting and asking questions is there?



Yeah it is a ETS relocation kit. It doesn't appear to have an actual brand on the battery.

im not to worried about the charging. I noticed a pattern that in 1 week the battery is pretty much not able to crank the starter. So i purchased a 1200amp Jump-starter for the garage.

So i take it that about 1 week or so sounds about right?


i understand that parasitic drain will eventually make any battery flat but obviously larger standard batteries would probably last 3-4 times longer
than these race ones, without charging/driving.

 

If the car isn't driven regularly then just disconnect the battery or if the car is in a garage use a battery tender, that's what I do.

 

I have had a PC680 in another car since 2008. I always use a battery cut-off switch and I never have to charge it. It holds the charge amazingly well. It turns over the starter kind of slow though ....

On the Evo I have standard battery. My first one went flat when I parked it over the winter and it was sufficiently dead to need to be replaced. I now always have a trickle charger on it over the winter.

The drain various electronics on the Evo, as well as on most other modern cars drain the battery quite a bit. I suspect you have a weak battery to begin with that is just not happy being parked for a week.

However, small batteries will always be a potential issue if you don't trickle or use a cut-off switch. On a modern car using a cut-off switch is a bit of a pain as it will reset your ECU each time ...

Pick your poison ...

 

I have an Odyssey PC680 in my car now, it fires nicely.
I used to have a Braille B2015 but killed it from letting it sit with no charge for too long - keep it on a trickle charger if you're not using it for awhile!

 

Is the battery still under the hood, or is it relocated? If you relocated a battery you need to make sure you have found a good ground. A bad ground, or a weak ground can cause lots of headaches, dead batteries is one.

 

 

Just to add to this, a kill switch on the ground will help or you can use a trickle charger.

That's what I use, but my car is only driven to and from the track.

 

I've also had no issues with my PC680. My car sits for almost 3 weeks before I start it up or drive it and it always starts right up. This is my 2nd one and both have been equally reliable.