Is anyone else running a trunk mount battery in a daily driver and are their any drawbacks.Iwould like to do this in my 60 Val which will be a 3 season daily driver .The reason for this is better handling plus freeing up some room under the hood as Ill be running a H-P intake and thought about using a remote airbox mounted where battery now resides.Thanks in advance.
HyperValiant

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1960 Hyper-Pac Valiant(rolling test-bed)
1963 Valiant V2OO(Son's summer project,- he just turned 15 )
1972 Valiant 4dr(Daughter Kelly's repair in progress)
1974 Valiant (v8) daughter Kelly's work in progress

As long as you use 1/0 wire or better you will be fine. If you want better flexibility you can use two (preferably 3) runs of 4awg. The starter post makes for a convinient distribution point so you can run wire to the other parts of the harness that need it.

I have been running a trunk battery in my '64 for many years - "3 season" use everywhere I wanna go. A single 4 ga wire has worked fine for me, with the late model mini starter. You can't crank it as long as a regular mounting can, but it's not bad. Extra insurance - 2 ga wire.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

I have seen trunk mounted installs, with the stock style starter. When you watch the wire, it jolted about 1" in the air and got a bit warm everytime you turned the key. Depending on the wire, a single 4awg will probably drop 0.5v between the battery and starter while cranking, robbing your starter of power and creating extra heat in the wire.

A thicker wire will also help get a bit more out of your alternator and into the battery. Also when running hte wire make sure its not pinched by any metal edges.

use welding wire to prevent problems, don't go with the cheap battery wire at normal stores, the welding wire has very thick plastic. I've been running one four gauge too, never had problems, but I guess the extra security doesn't hurt, If I had done the installation in the summer I might have had two wires, though currently I'm to lazy to get out in the cold and do some work so I'm waiting for summer to come to make my install perfect. One thing to remember, jumping a battery is a pain when it's in your trunk, especially if your box is homeade like mine. This is something you could say, "I never need a jump", but as soon as you say that you will....

Oh yeah, I have an old rusty starter, haven't had drop in performance, though I think that I've seen less alternating capability. Where do you get the mini-starters? If you don't care about mini are they just as good as the autolite upagrade starters from Schucks?

You can get the mini starters new on Ebay for about $80-100, or used/rebuilt for less.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

I've been thinking of going with a dual tunk mounted Optima setup once I get a project car. Mostly just for the better weight distribution and for the ability to mount two batteries side-by-side. Seems like it'd work to me, but I'd definately go with welding cables as well myself.

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'74 Duster w/ HEI ignition, beat to snot suspension, A904, 8.25" 3.55 SG rear, still being tuned up and gets 17 MPG

Know how they always build a better idiot? That's me

Well, I agree with you on the welding cables and the niceness of weight distribution I have to question the two battery system. Are you running a huge stereo or something? Why I ask is that two batteries are nice but you had another 40-50 pounds with the extra battery which makes the weight distribution gain nulled(I would believe). What might be bettery is a bigger, high quality altnernator with good idle alternation and making the electrical system as efficient as possible. Even if you do have a high-powered stereo you must remember that modern cars with 300 watt stereo still use one. If you wish to put lighting accents the one battery should still work, unless you car's not running, but at those times since I'd assume it would be for show you could bring a battery to run the car's lights. There are applications for two batteries and I don't know if you need them, I would just suggest against that idea and only use one battery if your wishing to do it for having extra juice. If your alternator can't recharge the battery's needs then it doesn't matter if you have one or two, you will eventually have a dead car, two batteries will just prolong the inevitable.

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My car may be slow to sixty, but at least it's been reliably slow to sixty for more than thirty years.

My '65 Barracuda isn't a daily driver but even so I've not had any cranking or charging problems. I used an outboard motor rigging cable wire (4 ga. I think) and battery box mounted behind the right rear wheel housing that allows me to still drop down the trunk divider in the Cuda.
The best thing was the immediate reduction in steering effort and the room under the hood. That let me use a '60 Valiant left side alternator bracket which I think is the way that the engineers originally wanted it. Kinda balances the look of the engine,
Here's a link to my photo gallery showing the extra room.
http://number6.homelinux.net:8080/gallery/album14/abm

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"Former Owner" of '65 Barracuda, 225, Auto, MP 2bbl intake, MP cam, Dutra Duals. Presently Moparless.

That is one clean car. Nice work!

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I've been calling it as i see it for my entire life and that's not about to change. Take it or leave it.

Well along with planning on having a high output alternator, my primary reason for having dual batteries would be the redundancy. While I plan on having a high quality stereo system, I certainly wouldn't have anything beyond the capability of one battery with a good alternator. The added redundancy of having a backup battery (I'm a crew chief, I've gotta have a backup for everything) just gives good piece of mind and the ability to add other accessories down the road that might place a good level of demand on the system (like what, I don't know. I just like to be prepared for anything).

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'74 Duster w/ HEI ignition, beat to snot suspension, A904, 8.25" 3.55 SG rear, still being tuned up and gets 17 MPG

Know how they always build a better idiot? That's me

That makes sense, redundancy is great.

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My car may be slow to sixty, but at least it's been reliably slow to sixty for more than thirty years.

Speaking strictly from a point of redundancy, I would rather have a second battery in the car but just carried as a spare and not hooked up. Charge it every now and then for a while and you'll be fine, especially with an optima because they have quite good shelf life. The point being, if one battery manages to fail and they are in parallel it will drain the second one.

I keep a "spare" battery in the trunk for my boat's trolling motor. It's nice to have for emergencies as well. I use a battery isolator to keep one battery from discharging into the other.
http://www.jcwhitney.com/webapp/wcs/sto ... reId=10101
Bob D