It's time to replace the battery in my 2009 Argo Avenger 750EFI. Right now it has a Exide 60 ... Cold Cranking Amps 495 at 0 degrees F, 595 at 32 degrees F. Do I need to replace it with a battery that has the same CCA's or can I go higher? Will it pose a problem for the starter if I do? Physical size can be a problem, too. The battery well will not accept a large battery. The Exide is 9"x 5.5"x 8" high. Was considering a WalMart EverStart. Anyone have an opinion on them?
Hi Zircon,
I went to the local Total Battery Shop and purchased the largest Optima Gel battery that would fit in battery box. It depends on what kind of protection against a long walk you think is needed.
Optima batteries are by far the best. They have very low internal resistance, and high current output. I strongly recommend them.Originally Posted by Floorman
Steve
Another Optima fan here. I use them in my boat, RV, wife's car, my truck, and yes my Argo Conquest. I modified my battery tray a bit and put in a larger Yellw Top Optima because I run a lot of accessories in my machine. They can take a beating and don't leak.
So, I can use one with a higher cold cranking amp rating?
You can go higher. You can go as high as you want! The only thing the starter motor can't exceed is voltage which all 12 volt batteries will be fine with. Amps is like the torque of the battery, there is no limit to how much your battery can put out. Just be careful not to short them out lol.
For years I ran the cheapest smallest lawn-tractor battery from Walmart I could buy. My machine had no charging function and it was quiet a headache to keep running. Restarting it 20 times a day in the winter was not unheard of and yet for months at a time I never needed to charge it. It should be noted we us very small starting motors, and its more important to have good wire (heavy gauge) than a powerful battery. Small wires will impede amps more than any battery can make up for. Cold Cranking Amps 495 at 0 degrees would be 5,940 watts or nearly 8hp! Even my Diesel Yanmar only has a little 2hp starting motor. If anything, a bigger battery is more useful for prolonged winching, which can use more power than the starter for minutes at a time, or as backup safety in-case charging systems go offline.
Last edited by allwheeldrive; 01-05-2018 at 09:51 AM.
Thanks, allwheeldrive. Very informative ... and the question answered. I do use the winch quite a bit, since I have a plow on the Argo.
If a battery could deliver say 10 thousand amps, it will only supply what the load will draw. The equation is Voltage = Current times Resistance.
That means that if a starter has an internal resistance of for instance 10 Ohms, then with 12 Volts across it, 12/10 = 1.2 Amps. Unless either the voltage, or internal resistance change, then the starter would only draw 1.2 Amps, regardless of what the battery could supply.
Allwheeldrive is right, in that heavy gauge wire is the way to go. Wire itself has resistance, so a portion of the voltage is dropped across the wire, before it gets to the load. A thicker wire has less resistance, so the current pull is more determined by the load. Since a real starter has much lower resistance than 10 Ohms, having extremely low resistance of the wire leading to it has two functions. first, more of the 12 Volts is available for the starter itself, and the heavier gauge wire can carry more current without heating up, and burning out.
At standard D cell battery can deliver over 4 Amps of current, but it takes 0.1 Amps to kill a person. A human body has maybe 40,000 to over 100,000 ohms of resistance, so 1.5 Volts divided by 100,000 ohms equals 0.000015 Amps, which you can't even feel.
Once I had a boss tell me to violate Ohms Law (Voltage = Current times Resistance), and I had to tell him that it was impossible.
Steve
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