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Rally batteries

2K views 1 reply 2 participants last post by  DanielSL 
#1 ·
Rally cars place a lot of strain on batteries. Usually we use a pretty substantial battery , which is heavy. We also seek to lighten up what we can.
In the racecar world, there has been some movement to Lithium batteries to decrease the weight of the battery. I don't know if there is a Lithium battery that can supply the needs of a rally car. The real point of this is a cautionary tale.
I was at a racing event a couple of weeks ago that had an incident. A racecar that used a Lithium battery had the battery catch fire. I couldn't be extinguished. Lithium batteries have magnesium as one of the components. A normal ABC or BC bottle that we carry in a car will not put out a Magnesium fire. It requires a class D bottle to put it out. The point is that is better to carry a bit of extra weight that to risk a fire that cannot be extinguished.
 
#2 ·
I don't know if this will help, but in the real world I build custom, top of the line yacht tenders. We have spent twenty plus years testing batteries for all sorts of failure factors, and test parameters. Temperature extremes, draw down, reserve capacities, partial load, overload, etc... A number of years ago we settled on the Odyssey batteries across the board for our boats. I have used every battery I can think of over the years in cars and trucks, and I ended swapping out both of by Optima batteries in my off-road Disco II, which uses a double battery system for its winches; to Odyssey batteries because of my experience with them in the marine industry. In years of use I have never had an issue. This is not an endorsement, just an observation which I hope may help you out.
 
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