So, the last few weeks have seen a pile of upgrades and I have some observations about them.

Last night I installed an Oddessy 2150 AGM battery, heavy (very) great capacity, good deep discharge resistance. It comes with screw terminals so they also include adapters for the negative and positive terminals in brass. Now because it is a true sealed battery you won't get any acid corrossion or other buildup and the terminals are not lead so they're not soft. If you are sticking with the stock battery leads then you're set, the lead will grip the textured brass just fine.

Where I had a minor issue is that stock posts are different sizes, the negative is smaller. Same with the provided adapters, but I went with the very nice (highly recommended) JL Audio 3-way binding posts, their new design uses the same clamp on both sizes except with an adapter ring on the negative terminal. This ring is also brass, which means you end up with a tapered brass post, a tapered brass ring and a parallel sided clamp. Seems to go on, but when you apply any torque to it at all, like tightening one of the captive wire terminals on it, it turns or pops off. Not good.

My main suggestion is to order a second set of terminal adapters when you order your Oddessy (and I would not recommend any other battery for a rover, Oddessy are just the best and the 2150 fits perfectly in the stock box) and then toss out both negative posts and use two positive posts. Then you have parallel brass on parallel clamp and you're good to go and solid.

If you don't want to do this you might want to find a thin lead sheet and use that as an adapter instead of the provided on, it will deform under pressure and will stick much better and you'll get a more secure fitment.

The other thing I ran into was that the stock cabling is a bit short. I had to pigtail the ground onto the chassis grounding strip to get things going, but will be using JL 0/1 to re-do the main connections, all weather sealed and sprayed (after connection) with a cold-zinc galv spray to keep corrossion out of the system.

This may be overkill for you soccer moms using your disco as a cool looking minivan, but if you're going offroad or away from assistance then having a reliable electrical system that you know well from the ground up and carrying the tools to be able to fix faults in the field is critical. Keeping things from corroding should be a major priority. Liquid electrical tape works well in areas that you cannot get environmentally sealed heat-shrink to (the double wall stuff that has glue inside that seals the connections when you heat it).

I've also got the entire harness (inside so far) wrapped with nylon spiral and sealed to prevent any movement or other friction related issues.

I'm always willing to give advice on electrical or to discuss interesting ways to make things on our vehicles simpler and easier to fix. At some point I plan on figuring out why there's an ECU for the sun-roof controls instead of just a few simple switches. I really think Landrover is a bit too in-love with 'hey this would be cool' at times. Much of this of course would be fixed if they'd just import the Defender.

I'd love to hear your comments and suggestions. I think I'll be looking at running a uniform grounding system at some point soon too while I have things apart. A zinc plated copper grounding strip directly connected to the negative terminal with 2ga then run ground equalizing cables to the various factory ground points instead of relying on the variable conductivity of the body to do the job. Should be fairly easy and quick to do while I have things apart, and minimize future ground loops causing issues with electronic gear (of which I have a lot) and audio (which I'm working on upgrading).

 

Sounds like you have been talking with John Lee at Expedition Exchange, I think he is the only person selling that battery and all the adapters. They are good batterys, I am running dual Yellow Tops in my truck to handle my winch, Engle and my 3 HID's.
Have fun with your truck.
Mike

 

Mostly independent research actually. I did want to go dual, and I've got a full dual/redundant/fault-tolerant design worked up but I really didn't feel like going through the issues with fitting in both at the moment. My factory battery was dying (10 minutes of using the radio and it wouldn't start) so I needed something 'now' and this looked like the best option. I'll probably add the option to carry a 2nd in the back later on, and yes I know the issues. I'd be running conduit under the body and using 0/1 to minimize losses. For now my inverter has a LVD in it, and I bought a cheap Canadian Tire LVD I'm going to put between my AUX lighting and fridge and the main power just to help isolate the most likely flatteners. I'm also converting from using the LR OEM AUX switch to using a cruise control one so that I can toss the crap latching relay setup and move it up a bit so I stop hitting it when I turn on the ignition. Live and learn. Once I'm traveling in the fall I'll need to drop by

 

Those Odyssey's are pretty amazing. Total Battery seems to be the only dealer here in Ottawa and they are only two blocks from my work.My Interstate seems to be holding up very well,but I will be replacing it with an Odyssey when the time comes.Thank's for the install tip,I was kinda wondering about it.

 

Do not buy from Total Battery, get it from Expedition Exchange and save about $100 overall. I don't know how TB makes them so expensive but I tried there first.

 

Thanks again for yet another tip! Your correct in saying their prices on the Odyssey are a little out there,but I was under the impression that Total Battery's prices were pretty good.I buy all my household and cell phone batteries from them.I remember pricing the Odyssey online just after I got a quote from TB,and there was a pretty big price difference.I'll give your source a try when the time comes.Who knows,maybe I won't wait.It would be kinda neat to have a battery that is able to put out more power that my engine!