optima battery and capacitor or second battery?

[John3000 10+ year member]

Well I see you passed on the Optima, good choice. Optima batteries were very good in the past, but what most people don't know is they got bought out by Interstate and the quality has since turned to pure $hit.

 

[BloodyGuts335i 10+ year member]

havent read all post. but my suggestion is this, and in this order as well. Get a better battery for upfront and do the big 3.. still need more juice? then get an alt not a 2nd battery. after the HO alt, if you want more then add a 2nd battery. dont know if that was already suggested but that is my opinion..

 

[pawn man 10+ year member]

i have run deka batts. for 2 years and they have performed outstanding. running 2 group 31 deka's and 1 cs9000. i have 4 40.1's @.3 ohms. i am 2010 iasca stock pro 1 north american champ(158 db). for the money deka is the way to go. you can spend more money on kinetic or power master but i don't think you will see where the money went.

 

[smoka 10+ year member]

Well I see you passed on the Optima, good choice. Optima batteries were very good in the past, but what most people don't know is they got bought out by Interstate and the quality has since turned to pure $hit.

Optima quality has been going down hill for years. They were bought out by Johnson Controls but they still had problems with quality. So they ended up closing the factory and building a brand new state of the art plant to build nothing but Optima batts. I'm guessing the quality will have improved greatly and Optima will soon be back on top.

Deka would be my next choice but their company is hurting right now so I'm not sure what will happen for them in the next year or two....

 

[smoka 10+ year member]

smoka right with one point wrong with the other. As for used batteries yes. But remember there are such things as blemb batteries that had something wrong didn't leave the factory got fixed usually available at such places as interstate store and battery warehouses.
Your second point batteries should all be the same or you should be using a isolator technicly they should be the same age and the same brand as for the same size not needed brand and age so the loss of words for he exaxlct term. It boils down to same brand so that it has the same thickness of plates in it so when called on the only variance in time between the two is do to resistance in the wire.

I don't mean age by old and new, I mean age as in you want to buy batts that were built at the same time. This would provide you the best chance of not having any variation in OCV between the two. If they are not isolated and the OCV's are not exactly the same, then you will have a slow drain from one batt to the next, so you want the batts to be as similar as possible which means they should be built at the same time (matching datecodes).

Also for the same reason you want to buy the same group size for all batts. Any difference in plate geometry, paste thickness, plate count, etc will cause variation in the OCV.

Of course this is only if you want to get the max life out of your batts. Plenty of people run different brands/sizes of batts together without problems, but it just depends if you want to take that chance.

 

[belgaj]

Caps **** compared to batts.

Can someone explain to me why batteries are better than capacitors? I'm not sure what people have against capacitors in car audio. For your information adding a second battery will increase the load taken from the alternator, therefore doing the complete opposite of what you intended on having it do. When your vehicle is running, the current drawn to electronics in the vehicle is taken directly from its power source...ie the ALTERNATOR. Adding a second battery will increase the length of time you can run your electronics with the vehicle turned off. So unless you plan on listening to music in front of your house with the vehicle turned off, get a higher output alternator and a capacitor. The general rule is 1 farad per 1000 watts of power.

Anyways, why wouldn't you use a device that is engineered to charge and discharge at a blink of the eye?