I was very curious to see inside. First order of business was to remove the black plastic handles. They are held in place with a half-dozen or so short Phillips screws on each side, and one long one at the top-front of the handle. They were easily removed.
Once the black surrounding handles were removed, more Phillips screws were exposed, this time holding the blue plastic case halves together.
I correctly suspected that the utility pouches on each end would need to be removed so the blue pieces could be separated. This required prying under the white plastic shim-spacers with bent-nose pliers to pull the black plugs out.
Happily, none of the one-way plugs were damaged.
After removing the last two screws at the bottom of the case, I was able to easily separate the main housing. Opened the starboard side first. Ah ha! There's the big battery. No obvious damage. Rubber hose from the tire inflator pump to the indicator. In general, there were no quick-disconnects so I could not easily detach parts.
Curious. The battery is lying on its side. That's OK for a sealed lead acid, of course.
In the image above, the pump is at the bottom-right; the inverter is at the top-right.
When I separated the case pieces on the port side, a wire detached. Sheesh, the only detachable connectors! I assume it had been affixed to the right-side blade of the fuse. Battery looked OK from this side. Again, no explosions. No breaks in the case.
Disconnected the battery leads (with a Phillips driver again and an 8mm spanner) and removed the heavy battery. This allowed for a clear look at the guts. "Like Sony guts." Very good view of the inverter at the top-right and again the pump at the bottom-right. The 12 amp fuse at the left.
The inside back looked OK as well. The big kill switch, for engaging the big external terminals, reminded me of the switches used in race cars.
Finally had a good look at the battery. The case was not cracked or broken or swollen or blistered. But there was residue, presumably from out-gassing, around the terminals. The battery is, in inches, 7-3/4 wide by 5-1/4 deep by 6-3/8 tall. In millimetres, approximately: 197 x 130 x 160.
The labeling:
Sealake
Rechargeable Sealed Lead Acid Battery
FM12330
12V33Ah/20HR
Made in China.
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Looked up the battery. Found the Sealake FM12330 product page. They showed the weight as 9.73 kg.
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Similar batteries on Amazon.ca look to be in the $100 range.
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Did a deeper dive into the battery pack on 13 Mar '18 to examine the internal wiring and inspect the main module circuit board.
1 comment:
Nice post!
Our Nautilus is ~8 year old and surprises ... it doesn't hold a charge anymore.
Did you get to replacing the battery? I'm looking to replace ours. I see a pile of ajcbattery 12v 35ah on amazon.ca for about $104. Is this what you chose?
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