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One for T1. While I was using a vehicle here, it started good, switched it off and later tried to start it and the battery was completely stuffed. About 3 years old. Have to buy a new one and that got me thinking while I was trying to lift the heavy thing out. Why don't we use Lithium for cranking batteries? Are they not compatible for that or too expensive. They would be smaller,lighter and probably last a lot longer.
Cheers John

Ok yes let me know the answer

If they are mounted some where outside the engine bay where it gets mega hot, they do the job great. They can't handle much over 65*C and provide a long cycle life. To get the maximum discharge and fast charge they do actually heat them up to around this temp, but the cycle life suffers.
Having said that, they should still last for better than 2,000 cycles, that's around 5 1/2yrs so well and truly more than the 3 yrs the start battery lasted. My guess the failure with this battery was a grid connection failure meaning one of the lead bars that that join each cell to the next has been cracked for a while and a high current surge has melted the lead at the point of the crack and now the energy can't flow from negative to positive so no output.
Lucky it was just a "dead now"and that it didn't ignite the hydrogen/oxygen mix, enough explosive force to tear the bonnet off or tear a mudguard off .....

T1 Terry

This one was out of my tractor. It would be more complicated than just putting in a lithium battery ?? Would it need a different charging system than the standard alternator. I know it would not be economical for my tractor but I thought with new cars where weight and size is a serious consideration they could find a safe spot somewhere to put it.
Cheers John

Riverlander wrote: ↑Sun Feb 14, 2021 7:22 pm This one was out of my tractor. It would be more complicated than just putting in a lithium battery ?? Would it need a different charging system than the standard alternator. I know it would not be economical for my tractor but I thought with new cars where weight and size is a serious consideration they could find a safe spot somewhere to put it.
Cheers John

Actually, the tractor would be an ideal situation for such an upgrade. Simply use one of those battery disconnect switches when it gets parked up and all would be fine the next time you needed to use it because the lithium battery doesn't need to be kept charged.
Depending on the voltage regulator used for the alternator as to how difficult it would be to adjust the charging voltage back to between 13.6v and 13.8v, nothing else required.

Why don't they install them in new cars??? The battery industry would die in a few yrs without the constant turn over of dead start batteries and aux batteries in hybrid and pure electric cars ..... that's right, the traction battery is lithium, the aux 12v battery is still lead acid ...... I'll let you figure out why ......

T1 Terry