nmonga

Hey guys,

Just wondering if any of you can recommend me a good under the hood battery upgrade for my EL. I have been told to look into the following:

kinetik hc1400
shuriken skbt60
optima 51R (discontinued)

However, they are quite on the pricey side ~$350 and it seems a bit too much for what im running (JL 500/1 and PG Octane-R 8.0.4).

The problem is dimming at high volumes. I want to refrain from upgrading my alternator and stick with the battery + big 3 combo.

Thanks for your help!

Sikk Nation

iTrader: (1)

Swapping your battery won't do much unless the battery is no longer holding a charge. The dimming you see is the generally the voltage differential between your alternator and battery. that 2.2V drop is roughly 20% power so your lights Dim because your amplifiers on peak loads are drawing more current than your alternator can provide. When this happens, your battery at 12.6V powers the system for that moment. so you get about a 20% loss in power, compared to low load times.

Changing the batter won;t help at all for this. Your new battery will still only hold 12.6V.

In your application, I'd suggest going b ack over your Big 3 and making aure all conenctions are solid.

Make sure the spot you bolted to on your engine isn't powdery/white wince that would be a bad connection. Make sure your shassis grounds are not onto Paint or painted bolts. If you bolted to the shock towers, that's not a good connection at all. Since the other end of that bolt is connected to your suspensions top plate which is rubber isolated. Sand all the paint from your connections. Make your connection, and spray some rust proofing over them or paint them to prevent rust.

nmonga

Thanks for the suggestion, if weather permits, i should get the big 3 done this weekend and see if that eleviates the problem. The battery suggestion came from my mechanic in order to avoid any other electrical failures (recently i had to replace my car computer and distributor and relay switch due to some electric element that blew them). He actually suggested to get another battery, however, taht would kill my alternator at a much higher rate.

Lets see what happens when the big 3 is complete.

Sikk Nation

iTrader: (1)

an extra battery wouldn't kill your alternator at a higher rate. It would add a tiny bit of load to it unless you listen to your systwem with the car off for long periods of time, then recharging 2 partially discharged batteries would be a pretty noticable load. Just having a 2nd battery that only get discharged nornally through starting the car and such would not make any significant difference.

Also Mechanics are part changers. Most can't even diagnose basic electrical problems. They just change parts on a circuit untill the problem goes away... go to Canadian tire and get them to do a load test on your battery and test your alternator. They do this for free.

nmonga

Hmm that is a good suggestion. I will definitely ask them to do that and see what the values are.

I have been getting so many mixed answers on this topic it is becoming quite hard deciding whats the right choice. Hopefully the big 3 will solve the problem. I dont plan to have this car for much longer ~1 year, so im just trying to avoid any excess expenses on it if i can...

Thanks for the advice!

LaZyLuke

iTrader: (2)

Did your mechanic tested the voltage drops with blowers, lights, and your system on? if the voltage went below 13V with all that on while the car was idling, your alt is probably gone (does not necessary mean it wasn't powerful enough from the beginning- sometimes they break you know?). If you planing on changing this car soon, I wouldn't worry too much, I had the same problem and 2nd year the alt just went, diodes blew providing AC current at 22V from the alt at all time, everything fried in the car - still drove but was smoking like crazy lol (headlights looked like those HID 6000k lol), the car went to scrap for $250 after that (still more then i paid for it- $200 lol), so if you start having real problems with the car- stalling on red lights, then I will worry about it, till then, just hold it till you sell it :]...