The "Auto Stop-Start" is so annoying!!!!

[Fozzy]

Wait a minute. I asked this question and several Forum posters said ANY vehicle can keep them charged. Do you know something they don't know? I'm not being snarky, just asking.

Also - you say "they will last longer than your Expy". Surely you jest? I'm still driving my 2003 Expy, they aint gonna last that long. 5 years is probably good. Sorry if your name isn't Shirley.

Yes, any vehicle can keep an AGM battery charged, just not topped off. This is from my experience running AGM batteries since 1990. I use to be into car audio and have had vehicles with up to 20 batteries installed. At that time Optima was the leader in the industry. Before true AGM chargers where available you use to have to trick the charger into charging a flat AGM by paralleling a standard fully charged lead acid battery to the AGM and hook the battery charger to the lead acid. I have 2 red top Optima’s in my CJ-5 that where new in 1992 still going. Pretty damn good if you ask me. (New Optima’s suck). I bet Artie won’t have that navigator more than a few years. I have ran AGM batteries in 6 dodge diesels, my CJ-5, a Ford Raptor, Ford F-150, Ford 6.7 Powerstroke,Chevy Kodiak, Polaris SXS’s and my new Can-Am X3 and none of those vehicles have been able to top an AGM battery off. The Expy is the first vehicle I have owned with a factory AGM battery. I think it’s a great choice for a vehicle with so many lights, gizmos and ASS. Very robust and can take a beating. But if you just do short trips and use ASS the truck doesn’t have time to charge your battery IMO and it shows when you hook up a charger. Go hook up your fourth Gen AGM equipped Expy to an AGM charger right now and I would bet it needs a charge. Shirley out.


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[Artie]

In my experience with AGM batteries you have to top them off with a AGM charger. My Expy had the lights freaking out and would randomly flash the lights. I put it on the charger last week and it was only 30% charged. Topped it off and it is back to normal. A fully charged AGM battery is 12.65. I just went out and tested my voltage on my year old 19’ factory battery. 12.3 Volts cold and 14.9 Volts with the truck running. I would say your battery is fine.



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You described my situation perfectly. I am using a AGM charger so I’ll just top it off from time to time.

 

[Artie]

Yes, any vehicle can keep an AGM battery charged, just not topped off. This is from my experience running AGM batteries since 1990. I use to be into car audio and have had vehicles with up to 20 batteries installed. At that time Optima was the leader in the industry. Before true AGM chargers where available you use to have to trick the charger into charging a flat AGM by paralleling a standard fully charged lead acid battery to the AGM and hook the battery charger to the lead acid. I have 2 red top Optima’s in my CJ-5 that where new in 1992 still going. Pretty damn good if you ask me. (New Optima’s suck). I bet Artie won’t have that navigator more than a few years. I have ran AGM batteries in 6 dodge diesels, my CJ-5, a Ford Raptor, Ford F-150, Ford 6.7 Powerstroke,Chevy Kodiak, Polaris SXS’s and my new Can-Am X3 and none of those vehicles have been able to top an AGM battery off. The Expy is the first vehicle I have owned with a factory AGM battery. I think it’s a great choice for a vehicle with so many lights, gizmos and ASS. Very robust and can take a beating. But if you just do short trips and use ASS the truck doesn’t have time to charge your battery IMO and it shows when you hook up a charger. Go hook up your fourth Gen AGM equipped Expy to an AGM charger right now and I would bet it needs a charge. Shirley out.


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I bet Artie won’t have that navigator more than a few years.

We bought with the intention of 8-10 years. My wife may get the Navigator in a couple years, we need something geared more to off pavement adventures but can’t give up the Navigator because it’s just so damn good at everything else. I just don’t think the Navigator can get us everywhere a slightly tricked out Land Cruiser or Bronco could. Idk, I may get adventurous with it before too long... we shall see. Anyway, thanks for the rest of your post, lots of info and I appreciate the education.

 

[Fozzy]

You described my situation perfectly. I am using a AGM charger so I’ll just top it off from time to time.

I would give it a try. And it will be interesting to see if you take your new bad a$$ trailer on longer trips if it can top the battery off. We are going to try and use the Expy to pull our boat this summer and it will see more miles that just trips around town. 8-10 on the Navi, I bet a well maintained Odyssey will last. I wasn’t talking about the stock one. I am not sure who makes the FOMOCO battery. They use to be Johnson Controls. And they cheeped out on the Optima’s.


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[Plati]

Yes, any vehicle can keep an AGM battery charged, just not topped off. This is from my experience running AGM batteries since 1990. I use to be into car audio and have had vehicles with up to 20 batteries installed. At that time Optima was the leader in the industry. Before true AGM chargers where available you use to have to trick the charger into charging a flat AGM by paralleling a standard fully charged lead acid battery to the AGM and hook the battery charger to the lead acid. I have 2 red top Optima’s in my CJ-5 that where new in 1992 still going. Pretty damn good if you ask me. (New Optima’s suck). I bet Artie won’t have that navigator more than a few years. I have ran AGM batteries in 6 dodge diesels, my CJ-5, a Ford Raptor, Ford F-150, Ford 6.7 Powerstroke,Chevy Kodiak, Polaris SXS’s and my new Can-Am X3 and none of those vehicles have been able to top an AGM battery off. The Expy is the first vehicle I have owned with a factory AGM battery. I think it’s a great choice for a vehicle with so many lights, gizmos and ASS. Very robust and can take a beating. But if you just do short trips and use ASS the truck doesn’t have time to charge your battery IMO and it shows when you hook up a charger. Go hook up your fourth Gen AGM equipped Expy to an AGM charger right now and I would bet it needs a charge. Shirley out.


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Thanks Shirley. I've been trying to learn about batteries for the past few years. Picking up a little here and there. Didn't know AGM's been around that long. I check my battery voltage every once in a while and it seems to me like my 2 Expy's don't keep the old style (is it flooded?) batteries topped off either. But its probably dependent on the average drive time of trips. So … every once in a while I leave them on the battery tender for "top off". I also don't let them sit and run down and freeze anymore, learnt that lesson. Neither my 2003 or my 2014 is super fussy about voltage with all the modern features so I dont have any real symptoms of problems like it sounds like the newer Expys might.

One thing I think I picked up on is how resting voltage seems to drop over time. A new battery can be 12.35 but it drops as it ages and battery degrades and when it gets below 12 the battery is on its final days. I think. Which for me seems to be 5 years.

I like to know what to expect from my voltage reading … resting, fully charged, 24 hours later, while starting, running, running with lights on, etc … so I can take the pulse of the system at any point and know if I'm about to be in an oh shit position and track the health of the battery and charging system. I prefer to understand normal operation rather than wait until I have a problem and then try to figure out what's normal.

 

[Artie]

And it will be interesting to see if you take your new bad a$$ trailer on longer trips if it can top the battery off.

We are debating on taking the Navi to Utah and doing the White Rim Road around Canyonlands... after we put some appropriate wheel and tires on it.

This 1000 mile round trip I just took to Ohio and back should have topped it off, if that didn’t do it nothing will.

 

[Fozzy]

We are debating on taking the Navi to Utah and doing the White Rim Road around Canyonlands... after we put some appropriate wheel and tires on it.

This 1000 mile round trip I just took to Ohio and back should have topped it off, if that didn’t do it nothing will.

That’s, very interesting. Are you still having ASS and light, controls issues? If not, maybe the 12.3-12.2 is all we can push into the stock battery with the stock system. Last week it took my Optima charger (I have the big one) 8 hours to go from 30% to 100%. I didn’t even think to check the voltage. All my door lock and light problems go away after a good charge. I have only charged it twice in a year.


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[Fozzy]

Thanks Shirley. I've been trying to learn about batteries for the past few years. Picking up a little here and there. Didn't know AGM's been around that long. I check my battery voltage every once in a while and it seems to me like my 2 Expy's don't keep the old style (is it flooded?) batteries topped off either. But its probably dependent on the average drive time of trips. So … every once in a while I leave them on the battery tender for "top off". I also don't let them sit and run down and freeze anymore, learnt that lesson. Neither my 2003 or my 2014 is super fussy about voltage with all the modern features so I dont have any real symptoms of problems like it sounds like the newer Expys might.

One thing I think I picked up on is how resting voltage seems to drop over time. A new battery can be 12.35 but it drops as it ages and battery degrades and when it gets below 12 the battery is on its final days. I think. Which for me seems to be 5 years.

I like to know what to expect from my voltage reading … resting, fully charged, 24 hours later, while starting, running, running with lights on, etc … so I can take the pulse of the system at any point and know if I'm about to be in an oh shit position and track the health of the battery and charging system. I prefer to understand normal operation rather than wait until I have a problem and then try to figure out what's normal.

This thread is about the ASS sucking balls. And I think this is one of the biggest problems. You save some gas but can’t recharge the battery. You go to the gym,work, take the kids to school and hit 4 stop lights truck shuts down with all the accessories running. At night you ad lights. It doesn’t run on nuclear energy. Putting a AGM in was a smart idea because they can take a beating and come back relatively unharmed. The ASS will not engage if the battery voltage is to low. In my experience the battery get to low and I get electrical gremlins. Door locks not working, lights flashing for no reason. ASS not working or telling me low battery condition. Full charge and everything goes back to normal. I have only had to fully recharge twice in a year. I also see thread after thread of people buying high dollar batteries and complain when they are dead in 6 months to a year. These batteries come with warnings about low voltage conditions. They need to be taken care of. Odyssey is my current favorite and they have service warnings for some motorcycle and watercraft that can’t charge them. Full charge is 12.84. And they claim a 10 year service life on a well maintained battery. This is old technology. Lithium Will be the future, but they are in the thousands of dollars right now. They claim 3000-5000 full charge and discharge cycles while maintaining 80% of battery output power until full discharge. Pretty amazing.


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[Artie]

That’s, very interesting. Are you still having ASS and light, controls issues? If not, maybe the 12.3-12.2 is all we can push into the stock battery with the stock system. Last week it took my Optima charger (I have the big one) 8 hours to go from 30% to 100%. I didn’t even think to check the voltage. All my door lock and light problems go away after a good charge. I have only charged it twice in a year.


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I always turn the ASS off and I use the small version of that Optima charger. The only reason I checked the voltage is because I had ran a plug for my trailer and I was checking polarity and that’s when I noticed it was 12.2. This was the day after a 500 mile drive.