House and Thrustor Battery Tray Does Not slide - R27

[berger]

I wanted to remove and replace the three AGM batteries (2 house and 1 thruster) on my 2019 Ranger 27 OB. Initially the battery tray did not slide so NO access to these three batteries, they are in the port lazarette under the aft refrigerator. After I removed the two aft screws on the tray the tray then moved a little. Finally after many hours of working to get the three batteries out of the port side aft lazarette including cutting the terminal posts on the old batteries to extract these heavy items, I could see hidden on the forward end of the battery tray the factory had secured a bundle of wires with a screwed in wire harness! These wires were preventing the battery tray from sliding so I could remove the old dead batteries. Not a good design to enable easy replacement of these batteries. BTW I am looking forward to installing three new Lifeline AGM batteries, not the el cheapos that came with the boat.

 

[Vance1965]

Would you mind sharing more about what is better about the lifeline AGM batteries vs the stock ones supplied by Ranger? I'm beating my head against the wall with an undervoltage issue. I replaced all 4 of my batteries with new in 2021 and keep them topped off all the time. I took my house batteries to interstate battery and they ran a load test on them and all were fine. Could they test ok initially but when at 85% charge fall off to 10.5 ish volts?
I would like to make a better decision on more batteries so soon so any advice would be appreciated.

 

[berger]

Hi Vance,
I have been told and there is information on the net that the LifeLine AGM batteries have a much greater number of discharge/charge cycles before they go bad. Further there is a 5 year warranty on these batteries versus 3 year or less on other batteries that indicates to me that these are much better batteries. Also there are a lot of posts on tugnuts which supports the position that lifeline agm batteries, while more expensive, are worth it. I hope these thought are helpful.

 

[Vance1965]

Berger,
Thank you for the info on the lifeline AGM batteries. I ended up having all 4 of mine tested at interstate battery and they were ok. I will definitely consider these next time as the interstates only had a 1 year warranty. Still chasing down my voltage issue with the Webasto but at least now I know what it's not.

 

[YukonRon]

Regarding the battery access, our R29 had the same problem and I suspect some other models do too. When I did my upgrade to Lithium house bank, I made a number of changes:
1- I turned the battery platform around end-for-end. My AGM start battery is now accessible and the lithiums are "behind" (further forward) and less accessible, but they don't need maintenance anyways.
2- I attached StarBoard blocks to the sides and far end walls of the compartment so that the platform edges slide between/under the blocks to lock into place as the assembly is slid back in place. 2 screws at the stern end hold it in place; no screws to undo at the far end.
3- I attached 2 runner strips of Crazy Carpet (snow slider) slippery plastic to the underside of the platform and lubed with silicone spray.
4- I attached a webbing handle to the front edge of the platform to pull it out.
5- I installed bus bars for all the battery connections. Battery interconnects are all equal length cables. The only cables on the battery posts are the pos and neg to the bus bars. Bus bars are on the side of the compartment, astern of the batteries, so there is slack to pull the whole works out. All battery cables were upgraded to 4/0 with the lithium upgrade.
A little extra work while I had the whole works apart anyways, but so worth it to be able to remove 2 screws and slide the whole battery platform out. Hopefully some of these ideas will help others with this horrible design flaw.