Lawn mower battery?

[roachjuice]

i think my lawn battery is at 380cca's and something on the ca's. marcus thinks that it is retarded to put a lawn battery in an omni. if it works it works. for posi traction i have a piece of wood under the driver side part of the sway bar. works everytime. i also have a home depot intake.

[GLHNSLHT2]

mines in the mid 300's. I used 2 gauge negative welding leads that are butt connected to the factory wires with a bit of solder in there. From there they go to the passenger side of the and have 2 gauge eyelet connectors on the ends with bolts. works great.

[jim34]

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachjuice i think my lawn battery is at 380cca's and something on the ca's. marcus thinks that it is retarded to put a lawn battery in an omni. if it works it works. for posi traction i have a piece of wood under the driver side part of the sway bar. works everytime. i also have a home depot intake.

Gus's wood shim under the swaybar worked great on mine too both tires spin pretty evenly
Im just worried about fuel pump voltage dropping especielly since im using my fans while im going down the track to keep things cool i dont think these cars have voltage offset tables to compensate for dropping voltage to the inj and pump do they ?

[moparzrule]

You could do what I'm doing, get a TBI car 2 blade fan so it doesn't draw so much. They still pull plenty of air.

[minigts]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marcus86GLHS "...I've heard of Omni guys running a lawn mower battery ....." please, stop this madness.

No offense Marcus86GLHS.

I don't see any advantage in changing to a lawn mower battery other than weight. And if you are that hard up to "go faster", try increasing horsepower.

Flatlander757, I understand wanting to clean up under the hood, but the only thing I would do with the battery is relocate it to a less cluttered place in the engine bay or inside the car in a pre-fab battery encasing. My friend did this with his Mustang and it definitely helped the engine bay look cleaner.

Blueball hit it right on the head when he used the term "ghetto". If you can install a mower battery and have it look like it belongs with that car, then I say go for it. Otherwise, I would think about other ways to clean up your car.

[moparzrule]

Dude, if you are trying to save weight this is more than likely a race car so you don't care what it looks like. If you like looks over saving weight, have fun looking good with your car that could be faster if it was lighter. 20 pounds here, 10 there, it all adds up. 100 pounds savings is like getting 10 more HP, or a tenth in the 1/4. If you are running 12.1's, but can't get any more power out the engine/setup you have, loosing weight can make you an 11 second car.

[BLUEBALL]

You make ghetto sound like a bad thing. The mower battery has been the best battery in my cars that sit awhile. I dont have a draw and any car battery thats been used still takes a crap. Been using same mower battery for a couple years and zero probs. In fact the Omni cranked right up earlier after sitting 2 months. Its not a street car if that matters and I dont worry bout looks. As stated above 2lbs here,another couple here=something. Plus it lets my intercooler pipes have room to pass. Unless theres a scientific reason ya'll can come up with like stressing charging system,I'm keepin it in. BTW there are also comparable small batteries available,but with the cost of em,I would lose touch with my cheapskate turbo Dodge roots. Cant have that now can I?

[GLHNSLHT2]

I probably dropped 30 lbs total going from a ShelbyZ battery to a Garden Tractor battery and I moved probably 45 lbs off the left side which is the side you want to remove the weight off of. And put 10-15lbs onto the correct side of the car. Plus it's so small it sits where the purge cannister sits tucked in behind the a/c lines and unless you're looking hard for it you'll never see it. Plus with the open space I have a nice big cold air induction box with a big K&N extreme cone filter and a 3" pipe going to my turbo. + the extra room for my 2.5" i/c lines and dual talon BOV's. I'll never run a full size battery in one of my turbo cars again. It's cheap, easy, looks good, drops weight, adds weight in the right spot. Running a factory battery in these cars is "MADNESS"

[saw wave analog]

lawnmower batteries are awesome! i dont know why anyone would think they are ugly.. i think it looks a whole lot better than the planet sized stock thing.


mine is the one autozone sells.. 425ca.. 300cca i think... i have spent an entire day cranking the car, not starting it, just cranking it while messing with stuff, and it never died. i dont have any electrical issues at all with it, and it fits nice and snug just behind the passenger headlight in my omni.

putting the battery on the passenger side is also a big traction help, cured my one wheel peels pretty quick.




look at it over there!




how could you say thats ugly! it cleans up the engine bay a *lot* putting it on that side and shrinking its size by half... my engine bay almost looks spacious now.. almost.. ha

[RPMurph]

for everyone running batteries on the passenger's side, how did you wire them in? are the wires running around the front of the engine or the back?

I was thinking I would run a positive cable from the battery, along the firewall following the wiring harness over the the drivers side and install on of those 'jump start posts' that are on cars with hidden batteries and connect all the wires that would normal connect to the positive terminal to that post.

Then for the negative I would just follow the harness around and connect to the intake manifold in the back, swing around the front and follow the injector harness and hook up to the side of the head. or to the intake man, then around to the main ground.

[saw wave analog]

my harness is all custom so i didnt have to deal with all that part. for using the stock stuff i would have just gotten a couple of those power distribution boxes they sell for car stereo stuff.. cut all the stock power and grounds, feed them into those, then run 2 fat wires along the radiator over to the battery... i had been meaning to do the relocation for a while when i was still running the factory ecus, but never got around to it... when i was wiring everything up for megasquirt it made more sense to have it on the passenger side, regardless of the traction benefits


fits like a glove

[moparzrule]

Mopar has almost always used the best gear reduction starter. Even my 360 would crank forever before killing the battery in my 77' power wagon. The 440 in my newport would crank forever, and I never had problems with my daytona with a 500 CA/400 CCA battery. My shadow is getting a much lighter tractor battery for sure. Why NOT save weight????

[GLHNSLHT2]

I used 2 gauge negative welding leads and shoved all the factory wiring in the end of a butt connector and added some solder to connect it to the welding leads. Then ran the leads to the battery location and put eyelet ends on them and bolted them to the battery.

[NoDestiny]

I realize this is rather old, but...

I have been using the wal-mart everstart lawn-mower battery in my neon for over 2 years and has NEVER had a problem starting and functioning. Though, I have nothing, not even a stereo, drawing power from it. Just stock lighting, engine, and computer. saved about 15 lbs or so.

[saw wave analog]

i just started a spirit i picked up yesterday with the same old autozone lawnmower battery out my my omni that hasnt been used for 8 months and has been sitting in the freezing ass garage... fired it right up!




lawn battery for life!