Dual Battery Setup

New Setup

Early 2011, I decided to move my sec­ond bat­tery to the front of the truck. This way is more effi­cient when I use the Winch for long peri­ods of time. There is also less volt­age drop when charg­ing the bat­tery since the cables are shorter.

I am using an IBS 200A relay (from Sierra Expe­di­tions) to dis­con­nect the bat­ter­ies when the truck is off, so I don’t kill my start­ing bat­tery when I camp for a few days with­out mov­ing the truck. I have it wired to auto­mat­i­cally con­nect when the truck is run­ning. I also can man­u­ally con­nect them if my start­ing bat­tery is dead — already had to use this feature.

Old Setup

I installed a sec­ond bat­tery in my truck for hav­ing extra power when I am camp­ing. All of the acces­sories on the truck are ran off of the sec­ond bat­tery. I have a 4 gauge cable going from the bat­tery in the bed to the front where it junc­tions to the front bat­tery and acces­sory fuse block. I can dis­con­nect the bat­ter­ies with a high capac­ity breaker, which I am going to replace with a con­stant duty high capac­ity relay.