Ride on mower battery for race car

OZgreen69

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 24, 2016
Messages
220
Location
Perth Australia
Looking at a lightweight battery for my racer to be, I was thinking what could be the differences between a ride on mover, and a proper race "built" battery.
Beside the quality of it, like Lithium or similar, stronger casing.
I found some ride on 300 cca or more ,40 aH , at quite low prices. And if a may save a bit of $ there, the better. But I am not interested to buy one again in a year time.

Any ideas ,or previous experiences good or.. bad?

Thanks in advance.
 
I'm using the same model battery that I have in my lawn mower/garden tractor. It's a 16#, 300CCA/375CA battery that the local Farm and Fleet store sells for $29.95 USD. The one in my '69 is four years old, and still works great.

I also have a C4 PMGR starter on the engine which helps reduce the battery current requirements.
 
Thank you very much! This is the info I was looking for ! And yes having one of those fancy starters will definitely help the current draw.
 
Did a little more battery "testing". My new neighbor is a retired battery company rep, and he had a few samples stored in his basement and offered to loan a couple to me to try out. They were a 22AH (14.4#) and an 18AH (11.5#) lead acid sealed units. (It was 50* in the garage when I tried them out.) I tried the 22AH battery first, and it cranked the engine over quite well. Encouraging, but the weight savings (1.6#) isn't much compared to the extra cost of the battery (looks to be about $30 more than my current 16# battery). I then hooked the 18AH battery up and cranked the engine. All in all it cranked fine, but I didn't get the feeling that I could count on it to crank long enough to clear a flooded engine (I could be wrong, and it might have sufficient charge at 70-80* to do the job). This battery, however, would take another 4.5# off the car.
I think over the winter here I'll just do some shopping around and see what kind of prices and weights I see on these 18AH batteries, and also see what a compromise size 20AH battery weighs. I need to buy a new battery next spring for my garden tractor, so I might just put the present battery from the '69 into the tractor, and buy one of these lighter batteries to put back in the car.
 
4-1/2 lbs off the car?
But just how much weight can the driver afford to lose?

Sent from my SGH-I747M using Tapatalk
 
I read somewhere that 69427 pleasure is to reduce the weight of his scooter to make it more potent on the track, and still keeping a "normal " car appearance.
This is what I'm appreciating, and always look for his posts. And I think that his weight is not in question. All said politely :)
 
I can say that this lawn mover battery is punching really hard. I had it to bring the oil pressure up and start the motor several times with no worries at all. I will plug the trickle charger during inaction time, but should have no fear during track time. Thanks again 69427 !
 
curious how the tractor battery will start a hot motor...

Well, the current lawn tractor battery has been starting the engine at summer track days for the last six years. We'll see how the newer smaller battery works, but some of the cranking ability credit goes to the C4 PMGR starter on the engine, and the battery should have a bit more chemical energy in it during summer cranking than during my 50* F tests.
 
i saw some guys at a car dealer ship start a car with a cell phone size jumper cell.....it was impressive
 
i saw some guys at a car dealer ship start a car with a cell phone size jumper cell.....it was impressive

I saw one of those type jumpers at Wallyworld the other day. About fifty bucks IIRC. I'd like to try one of those in the car. I assume it has some protection circuitry in the package to deal with any alternator voltage charging/reverse current issues once the engine starts.
 
i saw some guys at a car dealer ship start a car with a cell phone size jumper cell.....it was impressive

I saw one of those type jumpers at Wallyworld the other day. About fifty bucks IIRC. I'd like to try one of those in the car. I assume it has some protection circuitry in the package to deal with any alternator voltage charging/reverse current issues once the engine starts.

i would think that they would include that.
 
Top