Lithium Iron Phosphate Battery

[j1nx3d]

I remember reading that as it happened. Ugh indeed!

[Dave W.]

My two NOCO NLP30's are doing good. I have aftermarket voltmeters in both cars so I can see if anything is unusual. The battery in my daily driver starts the car quickly every day. Resting voltage in the morning before starting is at 12.9V.
My 944 will sit unused for several weeks without starting. I don't have a trickle charger on it and it still starts quickly, too. Resting voltage is also good at 12.8V. The claim that the battery has very low self-discharge seems to be true, although my car has very little parasitic draw, only the clock uses power when the car is off.

[dr bob]

Yeah, that was the sh!pshow I remembered. There was a lot more going on the background than shows up in the public side of that thread. Many of the folks who are here now were intimately involved with that issue as mods and admins. Part of an interesting list of reasons we aren't there now. But that's not the issue here -- it's whether to support AG and their less than stellar business and ethical habits. I don't. And I encourage others to consider other options if they share that thought after doing their own due diligence. Many other good options.

My car (928) has the battery in the left rear next to the fuel tank. If I didn't have a "real" battery there I'd probably have to add some ballast there to get the car off its nose. Meanwhile the car sits with the maintainer connected between drives. Last battery was replaced with only about a dozen years of that mistreatment. WalMart Maxx from what was then Johnson Controls.

[Aaron_N]

My two NOCO NLP30's are doing good. I have aftermarket voltmeters in both cars so I can see if anything is unusual. The battery in my daily driver starts the car quickly every day. Resting voltage in the morning before starting is at 12.9V.
My 944 will sit unused for several weeks without starting. I don't have a trickle charger on it and it still starts quickly, too. Resting voltage is also good at 12.8V. The claim that the battery has very low self-discharge seems to be true, although my car has very little parasitic draw, only the clock uses power when the car is off.

Thanks for this update. That's pretty solid praise.

As I understand it, these lithium powersport batteries are not really designed to be charged off of a car alternator. But you've had no issues with that?

And you'd have no issues taking it on a multi-day road trip without a backup boost charger?

[Ajay213]

How are those Lithium batteries holding up for everyone? Nice to get some real world feedback.

I am thinking the Motobatt MHTX30 or MHTX20 hybrid batteries might be the best of both worlds. They are 15 or 10 lbs (depending on model) but designed to work with conventional alternator charging and also have decent amp-hour ratings. Pricey, but maybe worth it...

My concern with the Motobatt stuff is that they are blowing an alarming amount of fluff up everybody's skirt and not really going into any detail on anything. You can't make a 'hybrid' AGM and Li battery, the technology isn't something you can mix together in any way (it's like saying a made an unleaded/diesel/nitro-methane hybrid engine!), unless there is literally a small LI battery and an AGM battery in the same case, in which case that is just silly and not very useful and is riskier overall.

Thanks for this update. That's pretty solid praise.

As I understand it, these lithium powersport batteries are not really designed to be charged off of a car alternator. But you've had no issues with that?

And you'd have no issues taking it on a multi-day road trip without a backup boost charger?

The alternator on a car and a 'powersport vehicle' operate the same way, especially an older car like we're talking about (modern cars have the technology that they could be doing more elaborate charging modes to a battery, although I doubt they would go too far, the cost/complexity wouldn't be worth it). In this case we care about voltage and how many amps you can feed the battery, the battery will have a max charge rate, so it doesn't want to see more than X volts and it can't accept more than Y amps, if it does go over those limits a good BMS system (usually built into the battery) will get in the way and stop everything, or the battery starts to over-heat and you basically 'wear' it out quicker (or if it goes to an extreme the battery will fail by 'boiling over'...case bulging, etc). As always, this is all true of any battery technology, just the numbers shift around a little bit.

That is all true with any battery technology, people have been putting motorcycle/tractor/snowmobile type batteries in race cars (and daily drivers) for many decades now, and they generally don't last too long from the abuse they take (usually a couple/few seasons). The 'max' charge rate of a battery is very much related to how big the battery is - the smaller the battery capacity, the less amps it can accept in charge and then the opposite as well, the less amps it can output for a big draw.

[Dave W.]

Thanks for this update. That's pretty solid praise.

As I understand it, these lithium powersport batteries are not really designed to be charged off of a car alternator. But you've had no issues with that?

And you'd have no issues taking it on a multi-day road trip without a backup boost charger?

There's no issue with charging. The NOCO batteries have a BMS built into them.
Getting into the car every morning and seeing 12.9 volts is very reassuring. It shows that the battery has a full charge. As I wrote above, I also checked the battery temperature after driving to see if there was any sign of heat, and there was none. This shows that the battery is getting the correct amount of power for recharging.
It's not getting too much power when charging, if it did it would be excessively warm.
It's not being undercharged either. If it was, there wouldn't be enough power to start the car. Like I said, the car starts like it has 700CCA behind it.

YMMV. Make sure your car doesn't have excess power consumption when the key is off since that will reduce the lifespan of any battery. Older cars can have issues with corrosion, especially if you live in a wet climate. Old relays, corroded grounds, and well-intentioned previous owners can sometimes cause mild electrical problems that don't show up until one day you find your battery is mysteriously dead. I wouldn't take a car on a road trip if something was killing the battery overnight.

[Aaron_N]

Thanks Dave W. and Ajay for educating me on this stuff. I'm an ME by degree, never did well in my EE classes...

I think I will give the NOCO a try based on your comments.

[stitch2k1]

This may be about the only time I link to RL, but see post #33 in the link below. The whole thing left a very sour taste in my mouth about both AG and RL....

Sounds like Scott and Chad can't get enough of each other.
Anyway, what does that all have to do with a sour taste about RL?

[Tom]

This may be about the only time I link to RL, but see post #33 in the link below. The whole thing left a very sour taste in my mouth about both AG and RL....

Sounds like Scott and Chad can't get enough of each other.
Anyway, what does that all have to do with a sour taste about RL?

See my post #71 in that thread, and (rennlist founder) John D's interjection, for the essence of the issue. RL went on to secretly ban John D. and most the moderators, after we had been asking them to do better on this and other fronts. It's good to be king I guess. They are owned by private equity now (KKR) so no surprise really.

Long live Carpokes!

[stitch2k1]

See my post #71 in that thread, and (rennlist founder) John D's interjection, for the essence of the issue. RL went on to secretly ban John D. and most the moderators, after we had been asking them to do better on this and other fronts. It's good to be king I guess. They are owned by private equity now (KKR) so no surprise really.

What is the context with that in regards to mods? it seemed to me like a RL mod edited your post to poke at you not being a RL mod?
Hate mods. No fun.