Battery

[Guest mcramsay]

I managed to blag a BMW gel pack battery off a BMW touring bike a few years back, and I was wondering if it would be a bit ambitious to think it would cope starting and running the Zetec? It's a 19AH battery. I only ask because it fits perfectly at the end of the passenger side footwell and would make for a very tidy install.

[Guest merc190provan]

I have just purchased an Extreme 20 racing battery for mine, you can check the specs against yours at Demon tweeks, i was told that this would be ample, it is also a very small battery. The 19AH does sound a bit low though, especially for starting, someone with more knowledge may come in on this.

Edited February 23, 2013 by merc190

[Guest rwh]

Mine is a 20AH gel battery from Rally Design and I have had no starting problems.

[Guest mcramsay]

Sounds good! I can try it and see what happens! If not I can get one of the oddessy batteries as they are the same size

[Grim]

the AH (amp-hour) is the capacity, ie how many times can you start it, without it going flat.

What you want is the CCA (cold cranking amp), ie how much power can it deliver on a cold monday morning, after you've tripped over the cat and run out of milk.

 

I stuck to a varta blue car battery - seemed to have good cca/capacity for the price. I wouldn't use a motorbike battery because if i had a problem starting it, i'd like to be able to have a few goes at it, but weight is not critical with a 2b/pinto combo.

[Snapperpaul]

Russ Bost of Furore is doing small gel batteries cheaper than all the other suppliers mentioned would be worth looking on his website

He has done a video comparison of what size will crank his 1400 bike engine

[Guest mcramsay]

Doing at the battery specs I think it has a CCA of 170A. Versus the battery I have at the moment is 460cca. It looks like the racing battery's give out a much higher cca with less AH. But I will definitely be changing to one, the difference in size and weight is huge! Plus in the footwell out the way is much neater, just hot to make sure I can get into the battery for a jump if need be!

[Snapperpaul]

I've hidden the battery low down on the engine bay floor on an S3a then added some jump lead cable and an Anderson plug for jump and charging