Still at Somerset Airfield near Wilmington Vermont.
This is also the first trip with the new battery in the truck.
A youtuber, Will Prowse discovered that the highly trusted BattleBorn batteries actually have a shoddy design if you use them to their max charge and discharge ratings. I never worked mine that hard, and they probably would have continued to be fine, but for the peace of mind I've removed them.
Will Prowse's video is here https://youtu.be/XP2yPY57Wjc?is=ihYvnuF-Rf8RdikZ
Long story short, they used a plastic washer between the wires that connect the battery cells to the positive and negative terminal posts. So if you charge or drain the battery at the max rating the platic washer deforms. ALL batteries get hot, but because Battleborn used plastic in the wire to post connection, the plastic can melt and things get loose which makes the connections to the battery cells unreliable. The cells are also cheap too (per Will) and fail far earlier than the rated 3,000 fully charged/drained cycles. Battleborn claims using the plastic in the wire to post connection was an intentional safety feature, which is probably B.S. They're sueing Will Prowse, but I think Will is likely right. Comparing Battleborn's design to other cheaper batteries, the cheap Chinese batteries are actually much safer.
The good news is that the way I used my Battleborn batteries, they never got drained or charged hard enough to run the risk Will Prowse found, but better safe than sorry. My worry is that I keep them out in the truck all Winter, and a few times they got too cold to charge and the batteries went dead. That's hard on any battery. Fiddling with the main battery positive and negative posts, I didn't notice any wiggle, but I bet I nuked a few of the cells inside when I let the batteries freeze.
For $799 (the cost of one Battleborn battery back in 2020), I got a new Vatrer brand battery that gives me the same capacity as 3 Battle Born batteries (I only had 2 battleborns).
https://a.co/d/0iqJbARZhttps://a.co/d/0iqJbARZThe Vatrer has an app so I can monitor the battery directly, the battleborns didn't. The Vatrer is built in a metal box and built-in heating pads to keep the battery cells from freezing. Will Prowse took a Vatrer apart and was really impressed by the design. They use square/rectangular prismatic cells , so the battery box is smaller. Battleborn uses cylinder shape battery cells, like bigger D cell alkaline batteries. The round cells waste space and make the battery bigger overall.
The BattleBorns use a lot of plastic inside, don't have an app, and no built-in heating pads. I'd added some myself to the outside of the battleborn, so I could use the batteries even in the Winter when it's single digits out, but I had to think about it and turns things off/on myself. Because I had 2 battleborns, they took up more space in the truck, and I wasn't able to make a foam box to completely surround them like I did with the Vatrer, more on that below.
The Vatrer also put the BMS outside the battery box on top of the battery with it's own cooling fan,. The BMS (battery management system) is a circuit board doing all the thinking for the battery and just like a laptop you don't want it getting too hot. So having it outside the battery box with it's own cooling fan will be great when I use the battery in hot, Summer conditions. Like that time I was with Jeff in Tuscon Arizona.
Last but not least the Vatrer battery is much smaller too.
A BattleBorn was 11.5 inches long, 8inches wide, 9.5 inches tall. But again, I'd need 3 Battleborns to match the battery storage in the Vatrer. The Vatrer is 15.5 inches long, 8.25 inches wide and 12 inches tall.
Or more simply, the Vatrer is only 4 inches longer, 3 inches taller, and a quarter inch wider than just one Battleborn. But I'd need 3 battleborns to match the Vatrer.
I was able to install it in the same spot as the two BattleBorns, but I was also able to surround the Vatrer with 1 inch of pink foam board because it takes up less space than the 2 battleborns I had before.
The pink foam you see in the photos below are not glued in place, I made a basket of aluminum angle and c channel to hold the pink foam board pieces in place. In the warm months, I'll just remove the foam board pieces and put the metal baskets back to keep stuff off the battery and let it vent heat better in the warm months.
The cooling fan is the orange thing in the top of the black box in the photo below. The blue thing on the right is the 2000 watt Victron inverter.
I'll fix the orientation of this photo below, but it shows me stack the pink foam board around the Vatrer battery. There's 1 inch of foam board under the battery too
It's completely walled off with foam board.
Last but not least foam board on top with the custom aluminum framing over it.
I couldn't do full width pieces because of the overhanging safe. No biggee, just more cutting/ building work. It's like adult legos/erector set work. It was fun. The aluminum pieces are riveted together. Here's a photo showing the smaller metal frame pulled off
The framing also lets me stack duffel bags on top without worrying about their weight making contact with the battery terminals.
And because the width of the Vatrer is roughly the same as the Battleborn, it frees up space for me to store my misc tool roll bag in the dead space between the battery and the side of the truck bed.
that other metal bar going side to side is from the kitchen pullout drawer. It's why when I made the metal baskets to go over the pink foam board, I made the c channel pieces on top longer so the duffel bag wouldn't sag and get in the way of the metal tubing that slides in and out . For the photo I shoved the tool bag to the right, but I can't keep it there because it covers the air intake for the inverter, it would make the inverter overheat if I kept it there. I don't use this tool roll much. It's for repairs when I'm on the road, so it's nice it's no longer taking up space behind the passenger seat in the truck cab.
Finally, this morning I checked, the battery was 11 degrees warmer than the temperature dongle for the victron inverter. I'd called that a success, pretty sure it was below freezing from 4a.m. to 8a.m.
The inverter's temp was 37F
The battery's was 48F
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