Battery 101

[Todd Wilson]

I was wondering...........can you have too big of an amp battery in a car and cause problems?   I bought a 1000 amp battery today for my old dodge truck. The 440 needs it all in the middle of winter to turn it over. I also run a winch off this as well.

Was wondering if putting a battery like this into a car which would require 600amps   or even less like a 1000amp battery into my little daily driver Honda Prelude would cause problems?



Todd

[Plumcrazy]

The bigger battery is no problem.
Another thing you may want to think about is a new mini starter, they spin the motor over much faster than the original starters ever did.

[defiance]

To some extent that's true - as long as either (a) you don't ever discharge the battery, or (b) you ensure that your alternator is easily able to charge the battery.  I don't know that I'd feel comfortable with my old original alternator charging a 1000cca battery from full discharge!   But, if you never discharge it, the car is never taking any more juice from your big-amp battery than it was from your small-amp battery, so your alt sees pretty much the same workload.  it only 'puts back in' what the car takes out, so to speak

But yeah, if you're keeping an old alt, if you ever fully discharge a hefty battery, just put it on a charger for a while to get a good bit of juice in it before running it.  I'd REALLY avoid jumpstarts.  But that's just me

[Nacho-RT74]

As stated, 1000 amps batt just will give you more reserve time in case of emergency ( broke alt or related during a road ) but if your electrical system is good, then car will take just what it needs, that mostly is not more that 50-70 amps in higher rate with lot of accesories working, halogen beams, A/C, rear deffog, hazzards etc... and mostly of the car needs can be feeded by alt, depends of alt output you have.

But I'm agree with defiance told... never try to charge that batt from empty load with yor stock alt since you can fry some part of charge system because the heavy loads for LONG TIME batt needs to be ok again. Stock wiring can be fried with constant high load.

So, is not true the batt power will fry your system BUT is true you need to check battery load if you have had more discharge read on your amm than charge read to save from LOOONG TIME exposed charge high loads.

an alt upgrade ( and wiring from alt up to ammeter and up to starter relay stud ) will be great to get less charge time if that's the case, and more equilibrated charge/discharge feedback.