first electrical upgrade: battery or alt?

[thylantyr 10+ year member]

What's funny about those colored batteries that people mention is that

from a specification point of view, there are better ones [like Trojan, etc.]

for probably the same price or less. Perhaps the real question is, how do they

test vs. rated specs? The only way to have a really good electrical is to

just oversize everything by a large factor, ie.. use many parallel batteries and

one a high current ALT {or two}, play tunes with engine off for long periods of time

and have less voltage drop that affects dimming of lights.

Another idea. I snagged a deep cycle battery at Sears and months later the

battery cell shorted [usually this doesn't happen] and I took it back to Sears,

they load tested it to verify and gave me a free replacement. Take advantage

of warranties and when you abuse the ordinary battery, get a free-bee. If

the ordinary battery is still going strong past the warranty period, then it's

all good. win - win situation.

 

[B5inVA 10+ year member]

Sorry but what does the "big 3" mean?//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif

 

[yischrax 10+ year member]

to clarify you guys are trying to say that the battery and alt work like a bucket and a house you fill the bucket and poor it out and refill the bucket? If so your wrong the battery when the vehicle is running only has one primary function it is to take out the A/C ripple the rectifier could not. The alt wouldn't be running all the time if it worked like you are talking and your voltage would not stay at a steady state it would go from 12v to 13.7-14.3 don't know about you but mine only goes higher and lower when I am bumpin some low bass at high volumes This is because the alt can not produce enough power and the batterys reserve capacitance is needed for this massive amount of amprage now if I had more amprage from my alt would I have this problem as long as your battery is a 700 cca amp battery and get it tested if it tests out fine go with the alt for now.. Another large thing to concider is how many volts dose your electrical system produce when the vehicle is on mine only dose 13.7 some do 14.3 depends on manufacture and spicific model though you might want to look at a externaly regulater if you are unhappy with your voltage output remember you can only go so high before you run into problems with frying stock electronics

Second a yellow top is still concidered a starting battery it is the same thing except it has thicker plates so that it can take harder bursts with out worping the plates inside. You do however loose reaction time AKA transision responce. it is not alot and most people say it will never make a difrence if you wanted to bring the transision responce or ESR lower put a capacitence with a low ESR cap close to the amp .