Dual Battery Solution

So with the camping trip coming up, I wanted to make sure I had enough juice in the car to handle the big 1.5kw/750w inverter.   I knew that as good as my Optima was it was not going to be enough.  I did some quick brainstorming and said why the heck not.   I grabbed the 3 ought welding cable I had left over from my remote mount battery in my 857GT. I grabbed 4 standard battery connectors and got to work.   I put the 2 top post terminals on the AC Delco, then put one top post and one side post on the Optima as well as moved one of the stock ones to the top.  This way I had no chance of accidentally hooking it up backwards.   I dropped the battery in the base of the trunk.  I was going to secure it with one of my universal battery hold down kits, however decided for the rather short time it would be in there, stacking camping gear beside it would suffice.

         Well  I parked the car Friday, fired up the inverter, inflated our mattress, plugged in a light for a while, ran the Stereo for about 4hrs straight. Just to check, I jumped in, and it fired right up. So I shut it down. Next morning, radio back on, inverter to charge extra camera batteries, re-inflated the air mattress, charged up both radios, all 3 cell phones via the 12v car adapter to 5v USB adapter. Never even bothered to fire it up on Saturday. Sunday, morning, I jumped in hit the key and it spun the engine better than ever. I was very pleased. Hitched up the trailer and made the drive home.  I am not sure if I am going to leave the cables in there or not.   Having them in the trunk made it so much easier to quickly hoot the inverter up.  I would have to get some cable boots. To cover up the ends, maybe make a small pocket to stuff them into.

          The Delco battery was nearly dead when I first put it in, so I gave it a few hours charge on a battery charger, just to keep the load off of the alternator.   I am running an under drive kit on the alternator, which spins it about 25% slower than stock.    However in the end I am really pleased with it.    The total combined cranking capacity of the 2 is 1250 cranking amps.  Not sure if the gain is doubled or if it is kinda like sound, where 2 50db speakers don't equal 100db.

Note the battery cable is about 3 times the size and rating you need.

steve wrote: patrick will see to you about the photosize.

Steve, these images are half the width of yours. I can deal with 'em.  

Every year I go up the coast by boat to a place where there's no power and no roads (and therefore no cars). What I've done is use two car batteries connected in parallel to solar panels for recharging. I then use a 500W DC/AC inverter connected to these car batteries to run rechargers for all the flashlight, lantern, camera, and camcorder batteries. Works great, and it's very quiet.