24 volt mu

[mulover]

Hey all, was looking at a guy's mu this morning and it had duel batteries, he recons its 24 volt start, 12 volt run, Was just wondering if this is the case or has the previsous owner put in 2 batteries.
He said he needs both batteries to start it, then he can take one battery out and it goes sweet as?

[geeves]

Some 3.1 Mus had dual batteries as do some Bighorns and Pajeros. Its a cold location option. Its still 12 volt all the way though

[roscoe46956]

Ive seen some import vehicles with 2 batteries but they were hooked up in parallel (12 volts) simply for extra amp-hr capacity.

That may be the case with that MU.

Some of the early landcruiser diesels came out with 24v (I had one) and its not hard to convert them back to 12 volts.

Cheers
Roscoe

[geeves]

They certainly would be the ones to get if your intending to fit a winch. Otherwise no advantage unless you live in the Otago high country. (batteries dont work so good at -20)Alexandra has already dropped below 0c and its still early autum.

[roscoe46956]

Just a hint with electric winches, If you do decide to go with 2 batteries, There is a system where one battery is protected from being drained beyond the point where it cant restart the engine.

The ultimate with a winch is when the second battery is a deep cycle battery which will run a winch for a lot longer than a standard battery. Along with this is a split charging set up which can "read" the batteries indipendantly and send the the charge to the battery that needs it.

Something that is not well known is that when you have 2 batteries in paralell and one is run down, a standard charging system will not recognise that because it gets fooled by the good battery and the low one will not get the high amps it needs to bring it back up so they are balanced.

This is where the split charging system is invaluable.

Roscoe