ive been pondering the idea of adding a second battery. my battery always craps out with my reverse light and 55 watt headlights runnin at lower rpms and i was wondering how i should wire up a second one?

 

Your quads electrical system should be enough to power your winch, but only for a very short time. You'll find that if you keep the rpm's elevated a few hundred over idle it will keep-up a little longer, but will still suck your battery down and stall if you go too long. Another option, and one that I used and made all the difference in the world, was daisey-chaining a second battery inline, in series with your main battery. If you do this correctly you'll not only have twice the pulling time and amps, but is also very useful when running large aftermarket light kits, cold weather starting insurance when way out in the wilderness, and so-on. You take the quads negative terminal and connect it and the winch cap. negative terminal to the neg. terminal on battery number one. Take battery number one's possitive terminal (using 6awg wire and lead) and connect to battery number two's negative terminal. (Don't freak, it's okay. They are DC batterys. Just think of it like a flash light that requires two batterys...this is exactly the configuration multi-battery DC flashlights - the ones we all use every day) Connect battery number two's possitive terminal to quads and winch cap. possitive terminals... and you're ready for all the demanding tasks you can ask of your quad's battery. Doing this maintains the 12-14 volts DC your machine is designed to operate on, and greatly reduces the instant strain otherwise put on a single battery and your stator, and will do wonders for your winch pulling ability. Another mod you can add for minimal cost is adding a larger capacitor inline for your winch. Your local high-end car audio shop should carry these for the monster stereo builds. Get creative and you can majorly improve your machine without handing someone else all of your money doing it. Hope this was useful.
Also, if you've ever been doing a long hard summer night ride with the lights cooking and the radiator fan coming on a bunch, and noticed that it was dimming your lights and taxing your charging system, well, that will end...no more dim lights when the fan kicks on.



Just posted this earlier for a guy with winch-stall issues. I myself found ample room just below the rear bumper and just above the trans case to mount my secondary battery. Fabricated a decent looking steel case with padding and mounted in that location. I also made sure that since I was adding a Batt. outside the fender, to go with one twice the size. One for some of the larger lawnmowers and/or generators works real sweet. I have a Sportsman, and the rear bumper (pure polaris twin tube) protects it real decent from close following buddies. Hope this helps

 

hey thanks man, i was thinkin one of the HPD 500 amp lightweight batterys, its 53 bucks, the same as a stock polaris battery from polaris

 

Scott,
Blade has the right idea but he has series and parellel mixed up.
The way I read your (Bladebite) directions you have series and parallel backwards. If you wire + to + and - to - that is parellel, higher amps same volts. If you wire + to - and - to + that is in series higher volts.

 

I had the exact same problem, and my winch really killed it. In fact, the battery often failed before I got unstuck. I even tried making it idle about half wide open to keep the charge up, but it wasn't enough. So I added a second battery right behind the first. That made the wiring easy. I had to make another battery box, made it from some stainless sheet. You can see it in my pics.

 

so which do i want? higher amps i assume. so how do i wire that. could u please go into more detail then the + and - lol sorry but this is kinda comfusing to me.

hey Kudzu. i dont know if u got my pms or not but i was wondering what type of lights u were runnin, how bright are they, how far do they shine, how much were they, and if u had any stator mods. thanks for the help guys,
scott

 

Yes, I was about as toast as I may have gotten earlier when I wrote that. The wife went to a workshop and I couldn't help but to feel this would be the perfect time to stoke the hitter, play some U2, give my 80 pound Pit Bull a quart of beer (He loves the stuff ) and slobber on my keyboard. I wonder if there's a charge for typing while intoxicated? Anyway, my fingers must've spunout in the goo and typed "series". I was probably thinking back about my Alpine and JL Audio days when series would keep the ohms up for a less current amp. Who knows, I was stoned!!! Anyway, I can send a picture of the proper wiring for anyone needing it.
I noticed his lights also. I've got a set real similar on my sportsman. They make all the difference in the world. Factory you basically have a glow going on, but when you step to lights like he and I have it's pure night burning beams. Well worth the time.

 

if u have time email the pics to skk1988@hotmail.com if u have some pics of your lights could u send those too?. what type are yours? what wattage? im runnin 55 watt hyper white bulbs in my moose lights. they are a huge diff over stock but its still a flood beam and will never compare to a nice driving light. im thinkin of a set of 55 watt hella model 500 lights. i want a set of 100 watt KC daylighters but theres no way my charging system could handle it. its only a 150 watt system.

 

I would like a picture of the battery setup, please email to rob.atha@verizon.net

Thanks a Bunch

 

mudmaster250, you want parallel. If you were to run series your 12V system on your ATV would more than likely get fried with the 24volts that series would be providing. So, to get parallel, you need to wire the second battery to the first one with two wires. Wire the positive terminal to the positive terminal and the negative terminal to the negative terminal. This will keep you at 12volts which is what you want but effectively double your amps. Now, there are some gotchas to this. Both batteries "should" be of same age, same amps, etc. Bascically the best way to do this is to buy two new identical batteries. If one battery is older the new battery will spend all its energy trying to charge the older one. The other thing that will help you against a lot of the problems is to install what is called and isolator. This will keep the batteries from fighting each other. I would suggest a trickle charger also since the charging system on the quad wont be able to keep two batteries charged well.