New Battery, Start Current

I am about to get a new battery for my Speedster Turbo.

 

The following two should fit size wise:

 

Varta

 

Varta Blue Dynamic 544 402 44

 

and

 

Varta Silver Dynamic 552 401 052

 

First one has rated 440A cold start current, and the second has 520A.

 

 

I am pretty sure the first one has plenty strength to crank the engine, but will I put starter relay/starter in danger with the more powerful one?

The starter motor acts nearly as a short circuit with its low impedance, but whether it is effectively lower than 250mohm with cabling, fuse and relay is questionable.

 

Pretty funny (well, not really funny) is that I have start issues when the car has been resting in the sun (not correlated to hot/cold weather temperature), sounds like the starter engages for a fraction of a second, and then... silence. After some attempts it gets going. I measured the battery voltage to 12.06V (about 4degC), and with the engine running a little over 14V.

I put a Yuasa YBX5063 in my turbo about a month ago, no problems so far, car starts wonderfully well!

I would strongly recommend getting a charger that has a quick connection socket and putting that on the battery when you do change it (thats if you dont already have 1)

 

as these batteries arent exactly in the most friendly of places to get at

You mean to top up the charge now and then?

As far as I know this car is so old and non-sophisticated from an electronics point of view, so no issues with disconnecting battery and reconnect a new (don't need an external supply keep voltage up to avoid stuff shutting down and causing long lists of issues).

 

 

I am planning on getting a CTEK charger.

Hello,

I have a 2.2 , so I wont answer the battery question in case it's different for the 2.0.

 

However I did recently remove and rebuilt my starter motor, cleaning it up and re-greasing the planterary gear drive. It was around 1 hours work, including cosmetic work on the case.

After the rebuild it starts faster and smoother, and I notice less flicker of the dashboard lights as it draws it's current.

I can post a few photos but, again, its a 2.2 starter which maybe different.

12.06v is too low for a healthy battery, even once it's been cranked for a while to get rid of the "resting" voltage. A good battery should recover to more than 12.5v within seconds of cranking.

The resistance of the starter circuit wiring is very low and the power demand is dictated by the the starter motor, so a larger battery will not "push" too much power into it. The bigger Ah rating will just mean it will crank for longer before going flat.

Get one with a handle.

You will thank me later.

 

Yes get one with a handle...was a non-negotiable when buying my new one!

Just fitted the more powerful of the above batteries. Took a little while gaining access, -the old battery was resting in the ground wire. Couldn't pull the old battery straight up (and the new one down) without tilting the battery. Hurray for sealed batteries!

 

Now it just starts. No hesitation, the starter just spins right away

Current offerings of batteries/power supplies is NOT a problem for 99.99999% of equipment.

 

If the starter wants (lets say for easy numbers) 300Amps to dead crank, then a 440Amp or a 520Amp or even 1000Amp battery will deliver the SAME 300Amps that the starter eats... Typically a higher Current battery would lend itself to being able to do more starts before dying etc etc and also usually a higher crank current battery would deliver a higher current when stupidly cold too.

There "shouldnt" be any form of relay or fuse in between the starter motor and the battery, thats what the solenoid is for in reality, and that wont care how much current is on offer (again, it will only pull what it wants, and its all a relatively fixed resistance and voltage so, as far as Mr Ohm goes, his law stays put too)

 

This goes for stuff like phone chargers too, where fucknuggets assume that a 5A (or to go for the twat marketing misuse of units 5000mAh) supply will toast their phone that was shipped with a 1.5A charger, when in reality it'll most likely just use 2.4Amps and charge nearly twice as fast.