largest 12v battery in 2013 leaf?

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BrockWI

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
901
Location
Green Bay, WI.
So I want to get a larger 12v lead acid battery to put in the leaf. Does anyone know what the largest stock size lead acid battery that would fit in the existing holder?
 
BrockWI said:
So I want to get a larger 12v lead acid battery to put in the leaf. Does anyone know what the largest stock size lead acid battery that would fit in the existing holder?


Why would you want to add a larger and heavier battery. Just use a better battery and you should have no issue a larger battery "size" is not necessarily batter.
 
I am thinking of this mostly because I get the red battery symbol fairly often and I haven't been able to track down what is draining the battery. A few times I have seen about a 800 mA load on the battery with everything off, cycling to ready and off again often stops whatever it is, but without checking every time I shut the car off it could go dead on us. I am not sure what the heck it is, but it is intermittent and Nissan says it's not there. With a larger battery I wouldn't be as worried, heck it could likely handle a 800 mA load all day. The stock battery is sub par as far as batteries of similar size, sort of like the ecopia tires :) So I figured if I was going to replace it I might as well up size it as well. As far as weight if the extra 5 lbs of a larger more capable battery I think it is more than worth it. And going with something other than lead acid adds a lot more $ for the capacity.

My wife takes short trips all day, about 3-5 miles a hop, usually about 60 miles a day total and if she comes out to a dead car it will be bad for me and her job. So it is worth it to me to upgrade the battery.
 
BrockWI said:
So I want to get a larger 12v lead acid battery to put in the leaf. Does anyone know what the largest stock size lead acid battery that would fit in the existing holder?

In a deep-cycling situation, the type of battery may be more important than the size.

My choice for this application was the Sun-Xtender PVX-420T.

http://www.solar-electric.com/concorde-sunxtender-pvx-420t.html/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It's not any bigger, actually physically smaller than the stock battery. But since there is no free liquid electrolyte the amp-hour capacity is about the same despite the smaller size. The important aspect about the battery is that it is specifically designed for repeated deep cycling. Conventional 12V car batteries are not designed for deep cycling and will lose capacity when treated that way. Since the LEAF has no need of "cold cranking amps", this solar-storage battery seemed like an appropriate choice, as deep-cycle resiliency seems more important here given the vehicle's known tendency to draw excessive dark current under certain circumstances.

There were a couple of minor things I had to do to get it to fit:

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=11094&p=257288" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
Nubo, I completely agree about putting a true deep cycle in there as that seems to be more true cycling compared to a traditional ICE and that totally makes sense and AGM to boot :) I will look in to that. How is yours holding up?
 
BrockWI said:
Nubo, I completely agree about putting a true deep cycle in there as that seems to be more true cycling compared to a traditional ICE and that totally makes sense and AGM to boot :) I will look in to that. How is yours holding up?

It's doing well. I hooked up the charger to it recently, just to proactively give it a full cycle, but it was still over 12.5V.

I did have to purchase SAE-style posts to bolt onto the battery as it normally just comes with M6 bolts, iirc.
 
It might be worth checking this thread about replacing the lead acid battery with a lithium battery.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=4819&hilit=Lead+acid+battery" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
Trying to solve a phantom power drain with a larger battery is, at best, a band-aid approach. At worst it means wasting an expensive battery and still getting stranded. The best band-aid solution is a battery maintainer, used regularly.
 
I understand that sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
But the best fix is Nissan fixing the less than seven month old defective car.

If you have the option, I would try another dealer AND elevate to Nissan corporate even if you have to call them five times a week.

The usage pattern your wife has has been shown to put the poor Nissan 12V battery at substantial risk.
Could be phantom loads.
Could improper turn off.
Or both.

A good quality AGM might help, or if $ is not a concern, lithium.
But to fix the problem Nissan should troubleshoot till they find root cause and repair.
 
LeftieBiker said:
Trying to solve a phantom power drain with a larger battery is, at best, a band-aid approach. At worst it means wasting an expensive battery and still getting stranded. The best band-aid solution is a battery maintainer, used regularly.

Agree!

Make them solve the problem.
In the mean time, a small REAL battery tender if you need to.
3 years old, NEVER a battery problem, even when misused.
There is a problem.
 
I do charge the battery at least once a week with a Battery Tender, 1.25 amp 3 stage unit. About every other time it tops off in less than 1 hours and then sometimes it takes overnight to top it off. If my wife tells me she saw the battery symbol or I do I top it off as well. I have a battery tender lead under the charge port for easy access and charging.

While I agree that ultimately I think there is something wrong with the car, after reading that other thread it seems like there is no conclusive evidence as to what is causing the phantom drain and the lack of charge. My theory now is charging with the larger 6kw on-board charger doesn't give the system enough time to top off the battery. That coupled with the weird intermittent 800 mA load on the 12v battery is the problem. I have toyed with the idea of getting a 12v data logger, but honestly it is less expensive to get a better or more appropriate (deep cycle) battery and just charge it once in a while.

My long term hope is Nissan will figure out what is up with their charging parameters and tweak it before I get the next one, or maybe a software update on this car.

I suppose data logging the 12v battery might help my cause to get Nissan to do something about it and I like the idea of actually seeing it logged, but should I take the time and effort or just put a band-aid on it and move forward? That is the real question :)

This is the data logger I was considering

http://www.amazon.com/Lascar-EL-USB-3-Voltage-Data-Logger/dp/B003DS0BS2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1412200139&sr=8-2&keywords=12v+data+logger" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I have the temp and humidity one and it works great.
 
You should probably get something that measures/logs current instead of voltage...

That current level sounds like a stuck relay. Probably a bad body control module.
 
I was out measuring the battery spot, I would think the tray is the same tray as in the Rouge, much lager than the battery in there. The Rouge holds a 35N battery

Leaf - 51R 9.38 x 5.06 x 8.75 500cca
rogue-35N 9.06 x 6.94 x 8.88 640cca

Then my wife said why are we buying a new battery, if it goes, let the dealer deal with it. So I am just going to leave it for now. I am sure I will still top it off like I have been, but not spend the $ on a new battery. I did throw a 12v 9ah SLA in the trunk, just in case...
 
I ended just replacing with a deep cycle AGM (Optima Yellowtop) mainly because I needed it that weekend and it was what the auto parts store carried. It was a perfect fit (not sure if the model in the link is the exact one, though). I would still spend the extra $20 on a datalogger to get to the root-cause, but even if the phantom load is corrected I think a deep cycle is a good idea.
 
pretty good thread here

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=12448" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
You should never have a problem with the 12v battery under any circumstances given how new the vehicle is. You might have a bad 12v battery, bad DC to DC unit or both. A good Leaf technician will be able to figure it out what the issue is.
 
After having yet another dead battery situation, this time not a home, I decided to swap the 12v battery. Fortunately I have been carrying a 7 ah SLA and just plugged it in parallel with the 12v battery and everything started right up.

After looking at the small battery in the Leaf it sure looked like a larger battery would fit in that space. I did some measuring and found the space matched the Rogue. So I went ahead and bought a tray for the Rogue, part number 24428-56L00 and a battery hold down for the Rogue as well, part number 244204M800 and a 34N battery, almost twice the capacity of the stock existing battery. I just took the existing battery out, pulled the smaller tray and dropped the larger tray in and swapped out the battery hold down and tightened everything down. The negative terminal was close, but made it by angling the lead a bit, the positive side was fine as it was. I am quite sure that is the rogue tray base in the car :)

I know the 11&12's are laid out differently under the hood, not sure what might fit in there. But this worked well for my 13.

So now I have a larger battery in there. I know it doesn't fix the issue of something draining it, but at least it should last longer under whatever that load is.
 
Here is a pic of the battery in there. I should have taken a before and after, but here it is.

leaf-34n.jpg
 
Here's my '13 Leaf with the stock 12 volt.
unnamed (3).jpg
(The leaves in the tray were there at the time I bought it used.)

BTW, maybe the negative cable would've fit better if you had a 12 volt where the terminals were closer to the driver's side.
 
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