what battery to buy? and should i upgrade my alternator?
 

hey everyone.
the end of last year i purchased 2 10'' type x alpines 2 weeks old as a buddy lost his job and needed money quick for his car payment.

broke them in proper and used my 2 alpine mrd 605 amps ( i think cars in storage and cant remember exact. But i noticed my dash lights dimming fairly bad ( not the headlights) so i decided to put it off till this year.

my question is what kind of battery should i buy? i plan on buying the proper amps for the subs 2000 rms and im sure that will KO the lights lol.

also should i be buying a new alternator? what size?

thanks, hopefully somone can give some insigh. And its a 92 civic hb for reference

Upgrade your starter battery to something deep cycle, and add a battery in the rear. Complete the BIG 3 upgrade and have a run of + and - 1/0 AWG to the batt in the rear. I dont think a HO alt will be nessesary, but then again, its not a large alt to begin with

EDIT: Optima yellow tops should do the trick. and they're easy to find

dont mean to steal your thunder there allstar_6d9er, but ive always wondered if an extra battery int eh back would help even if your alternator is still weak? i wouldve thought that by the time it cant keep up with the second battery anymore it would soon affect the battery int eh engine bay? i think i have this all misunderstood but its how i always thought it to be. i put a new battery under my hood and it kept the lights from dimming for a bit then started fading again with the bass.

^ yah thats what im thinking.
And i had a new yellow top from my other car and it dimmed anyways with the wattage draw. So i think i need a bit more juice then the yellow. IVe been ready about odyssey batteries but they all seem super expensive.

And id assume the bigger the battery the harder the stock alternator would have to work to keep it topped up....so thats what i was asking is do they think its necesarry for a big batter( and brand) aswell as a high output alternator. And what a good volt would b to go with.

last thing i need is my headlights fluctuating.

What gauge wire do you have from the battery to amps now? I noticed a huge improvement with my old setup going from 8 to 4ga. Getting ready to put in 0/1 now as new amp is going in soon.
Nick

battery to cap is 0 guage. both pos n neg
and then its 4 to the amps n distrib block.

but i know its probably void cuz its stock wiring from the battery to alt, ground n stuff in the engine bay.
So thats first on the list once the cars out of storage lol.

:smilie_da I would get that done first and then worry about extra batts, HO alt, and caps
Nick

If you still have the stock battery it's either 70 or 90 amps neither are sufficient for 2000k. An extra battery will not help you as the batteries if not isolated properly will draw of each other(when you have 2 or more batteries together they like to have the same voltage and will draw off each other to do so) and will kill your alternator even faster. What you will need to do is :
1. Complete the big three upgrade to support
2. Replace alternator with a larger(not physical size nessarily just more current) I say replace the alt. and here's why. The alt is the source of all power in a car. The battery is simply a storage/conversion/filter for that power. If your lights are dimming it's because there's not enough current being produced by the alt. Adding another battery will only add another draw on a already taxed system.
3.Replace battery with a GEL or a AGM deep cycle battery. They have less internal resistance(less work for the alt,charge faster,don't mind being drained and charged repeatedly and therefor last longer. When choosing one of those batteries you MUST select a DEEP CYCLE battery(such as optima yellow top). A starting battery(such as a optima red top) WILL NOT DO! Starting batteries have more CCA but don not like being deep cycled.
I've had this happen to myself in my personal 93 civic. I had my alt rebuilt though(for space)

so whats a solid battery that could possibly still fit under the hood? not keen on the idea of relocating if i dont have to?

will one yellow top be suffiecent enough, i read somewhere they arent that beefy?

thanks for the input :)

The reason for the Odyssey being so expensive is that it will kick a yellow tops ass!

as for batteries the batcaps are pretty darn good for their size and weight

the VMAX have great specs but are super hard to find

another good choice is just to get a second wet cell it is inexpensive and you will have enough left over to buy a third battery

alright so whats a solid reasonably priced batter?

bought more 0 guage to do the big three today, so once spring rolls around i wanna b rockin :)

As I previously stated the "beef" comes from the alternator not the battery. If your worrying about the CCA(cold cranking amps) It's an acura the stock battery only has about 450CCA. The optima yellow is 500-600CCA range if I rember correctly. Somebody mentioned the Odessy they are a better choose but they are significantly more money, and will be harder to find not to mention that the car would need modification for them to fit in the stock location. For whatever reason I could not find a yellow top for my civic so I went with a stinger battery and it works fine.

yes i got that the alternator is the heart.
But im also upgrading my battery as the one in its not up to par.
IVe read thatt he yellow tops arent that great on a few threads?

yellow tops are fine
and dont forget Powermaster they make some beefy beasts too

The yellow tops a very popular and as such everybody has an opinion about them. I'n my experience the people who have had bad experiences have either abused their equipment or bought used equipment that had been abused by someone else. If you buy new and thus have a warrenty in case something goes wrong you'll be fine. Like I said I got a stinger battery and it works fine. The car still starts in -25C and I can leave the lights on all night and the car will still start in the morning(I've done it before).The stinger is a cheap one too. All the yellow tops I've seen were very good, but it's like anything else if you ask it to do stuff it wasn't designed to do(long period of using your system at high volume with the engine not running) it may fail. However so will just about any other battery that's reasonably priced.

awesome thanks everyone.
yellow top should befine then dont plan on over nights with the tunes cranked lol.