Isolator

[Crownvicon28s 10+ year member]

Im running a stinger 200amp battery isolator. Should I get rid of it? I read on here that they drop voltage and are only necessary if music is being played with the car off. Will I get a slightly higher voltage without the isolator?

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[Gebrochen 10+ year member]

Relay isolator or diode?

relay will be almost no loss, but I'd like to hear how you have it hooked up. Diode isolators are .7V loss.

(topic of whether to use an isolator or not purposely avoided)

 

[Crownvicon28s 10+ year member]

Relay isolator or diode?
relay will be almost no loss, but I'd like to hear how you have it hooked up. Diode isolators are .7V loss.

I guess its a relay isolator. Looks like a solenoid. Its simply hooked up inline with my power wire (wire into it on one side then out to my batts in back), grounded to chasis, and ran to the remote on my HU.

 

[Gebrochen 10+ year member]

Then you're not losing any more than a tenth of a volt at most. There are 2 reasons for an isolator. 1) to keep a defective battery from dragging a good one down and 2) to keep you from draining your cranking battery. The way yours is hooked up is #1 and the way I would do it

If you want to see how many volts you're losing, use a multimeter and put the leads to the in and out terminals.... probably like 0.05 or something. Measure it at full system volume after warm-up.

 

[Crownvicon28s 10+ year member]

Then you're not losing any more than a tenth of a volt at most. There are 2 reasons for an isolator. 1) to keep a defective battery from dragging a good one down and 2) to keep you from draining your cranking battery. The way yours is hooked up is #1 and the way I would do it

Ok. Thanks for the help Gebrochen.

 

[Horsemanwill 10+ year member]

Then you're not losing any more than a tenth of a volt at most. There are 2 reasons for an isolator. 1) to keep a defective battery from dragging a good one down and 2) to keep you from draining your cranking battery. The way yours is hooked up is #1 and the way I would do it
If you want to see how many volts you're losing, use a multimeter and put the leads to the in and out terminals.... probably like 0.05 or something. Measure it at full system volume after warm-up.

your the first person i've read that said not to get rid of it. i run one too cept mine is a PAC but same difference.

 

[gotparts90 10+ year member]

if your batteries are different the engineers i used to work with at Johnson controls said use one. If your batts are the same down to lot number its ok not to use one. do whatever you want everyone argues about this.