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battery mounting?

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masracingtd1167:
I use a small Braile in nose of my car . It weighs 17 lbs and starts my car just fine

lake_harley:
I'm dragging up an old post about battery mounting.

I'm currently building mounts for a few things in my FED and trying to make sense of it all in the room available. In looking at mounting schemes and the room available I've been looking at a lot of small-ish batteries. The more I read about AH ratings the more confused I've become. I'll be running a Chevy 305 with about 8.5 compression. Also running off of battery only the amp draw should be an estimated 8 amps each for the fuel pump, water pump and cooling fan, as well as 5 amps (?) for the HEI ignition. That's a total of 29 amps but let's round that up to 30 amps. Does that seem reasonable?

There's a Braille 2317RP 17# battery that has caught my eye. Pulse cranking amps is a whopping 1191 amps, but there's no AH rating listed. It's very appealing since it's only 6.88" L X 6.12" H X 4.0" W and I'd have a place to snuggle it in without any problem. My question is would the battery have enough power to run everything to start, drive to staging, make a pass, and drive back to the pit if (worst case) everything was drawing power through the whole process. I would expect it would have to be "topped off" with a charger each round but some of the charging capacity would be used up to run the water pump and cooling fan to cool the engine between rounds.

I haven't ruled out a compact alternator but have been resisting that since it's just one more thing to mount in the surprisingly limited space available.

One other lower cost option would be (please don't laugh) a lawn and garden battery that's a bit larger physically but lower cost than the Braille battery but still has 430 cranking amps. I have read a rule-of-thumb that it takes 1 amp per Cu. In. to crank an engine, and perhaps that might be reasonable for my low compression 305? FWIW I use 2 small jet-ski batteries in my T-Roadster hot rod that has a 215 Olds V-8 engine and it's worked OK for years.

The further I get into building this FED the questions I have keep piling up deeper and deeper. :o

Thanks, in advance.

Lynn

THE FRENCHTOWN FLYER:
I have no opinion on the batteries you specifically mentioned, but trust me, you want an alternator. Some mini alternators (Mitsubishi???) are quite small. Look at East Coast Auto Electric for ideas, both 12 or 16 volt.
https://ecae.com/product-category/alternators/

Paul New:
I really like the Odyssey batteries I would think a PC680 or maybe PC535 would suffice if your not running a magneto I would definitely try to put an alternator on your car

lake_harley:
Thanks gentlemen for the recommendation on running an alternator. I think I knew it would be a good idea with all of the power consumers on the car, but I was probably trying to convince myself otherwise. With the alternator to run everything, and recharge the battery from starting I think battery selection will be less of an issue.

Thanks.

Lynn

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