One thing I do know is putting an old piece of foam or rubber in the bottom of battery tray seems to help prolong the battery life, for vibration dampening, that and using smart trickle chargers. Got over 8 yrs of reliable use with a yuasa power sports battery all my equipment, boats, and vehicles have some sort of extra dampening on them. I also test every new battery I buy with a conductance tester before I install.
My dad taught me to use a small piece of plywood. I do this if the bottom of the battery compartment is metal. Many farm tractor battery compartments are plastic now which seems like it might be an improvement at absorbing vibrations.
I should have followed up on this thread, thanks for keeping it going.
I DO have a parasitic battery draw coming from somewhere. The automatic battery switch does NOT always work. There is a manual battery switch disconnect in the cab I have been using.
Still don’t have all the answers. The tractor sat for about a week with batteries switch disconnected. I connected them via switch and it started right up. That same day I was working on fixing some lighting issues. I had the key on for maybe an hour with some of the lights on, definitely not enough time to draw batteries down. Went to start tractor and it would not turn over fast enough to start. WTH????
There’s still something going on I have to dig into deeper.
1. Automatic battery switch disconnect isn’t working properly. This is an issue, but not the main issue. Its a related issue that would be nice to resolve, especially with a parasitic draw.
2. The batteries have a decent parasitic draw if the switch is not disconnected, but I don’t know what it is and haven’t had time to mess around with it. I will in the next few weeks.
Thanks for keeping this topic going and the suggestions. I will be using the tractor all summer for baling and I dread dead batteries-even with significant jump starting capability, it‘s a waste of time