12 volt car battery
 

will any 12v battery do for charging my cars when i am out or do i need a special "leisure" battery, and can i just hook my charger up to my road car battery or will it be flat when i want to go home?

12v battery
 

Hi there,any 12volt will do,even car ones,leisure batterys are better because you can use 2-3 items with no worry but a standard 12 volt will be ok for a days racing.there are cheap at halfords and you don't need to bump your car at the end of the day,some people do charge of there car battery but it's up to you. recommend a 60-90 amp battery from halfords it's what i use all day. hope this helps.

It'll do it, but its down to the make up of the battery. A car battery is only meant to give a boost to start your car, so it has thinner lead plates in, when you discharge it, the plates errode more and it won't last as long.

A leisure battery, is meant to be 'deep cycled' so its supposed to be discharged a lot and brought back up, because of this, the plates are thicker so they don't errode as fast.

So, a car battery will do, but might not last as long, but you can pick up a leisure battery for 58 quid which will last longer.

I use second hand car batterys from the scrap yard and pay about £10 for one, I've had the same one for a year so far and race most week ends, but if you flatten it its knackered.

Same as Philip except mine tend to be batteries replaced out of one of my families cars. With quite a few cars in the family, at least 1 or two batteries get changed each year, and they are free to me, so why not? They don't last long, but then they were too knackered to reliably start a car with to start with

Doing this is really "old school," as most guys today use seperate 12v power supplies instead -- but, recalling from the old days, using a seperate road car battery can be problematic from many fronts.
First, if you're just charging off your road car's battery there is a possiblity that you could drain it to a point your road car won't start (seen it happen).
Second, a car battery is really not designed or intended to be run much below its normal 12v rating - and why a car's alternator/charging system is designed to kick in and top it off as you're driving down the road. So, once a road-battery drops much below 12v it won't be able to deliver sufficient voltage for you to charge your RC packs to their optimum level.
Third, most road batteries will not stand up (at least not for long) to repeated deep discharges (from charging your packs) and recharges. It's what they call in the battery-biz, a "battery killer."
And finally, if this is what you're intent on doing it would be my advice to get a 12v "marine" battery (this is what we did back in the day), or what people use on their weekend fishing/pleasure boats - which are specifically designed to be discharged and recharged repeatedly.

You should be able to pick up a decent 12v leisure/marine battery (which is designed for repeated discharge/recharge cycles and a continuous drain), with a years warranty, for about £60-£70 from your local camping/caravan store or GoOutdoors. You'd need to collect as shipping costs would be huge due to the weight!

Car Batteries are designed for short, high discharge conditions, such as turning over a starter motor etc and not best suited for 'our' uses (although they will work but won't give as long service as a leisure battery).

HTH :D

Give these guys a call.

Alpha Batteries

I use this when there's no mains, and top it back up between consecutive race-days at the B&B/hotel - sneak it in, in a jute canvas tool bag. Discreet and effective!

Quick tip - your local back street or maybe even main dealer garage have to pay to dispose of old batteries - they should give you them free, if you just ask. Plus there is a way to repair the damage of over-discharge on car batteries, but you need to be a bit of a chemist.... if anyone is interested, I'll post the detail, but it can be found thru Google (refurbish car batteries).

Average car battery can delivery 30-50Ah without major issue, but that's from a brand new one. That's 6-10 charges (at 5A) before damage occurs. That's why some people find that they can use a car battery without issue, but a deep-cycle leisure battery has more usable power and doesn't have the same issue.
The extra £30 is well worth it, IMO.

Alpha batteries look a good option, with free next day delivery and very reasonable prices on leisure battery's.

This is my current battery of choice, only because it was free, but i can charge cells and lipo's for 3 cars every sunday, run my laptop every sunday off a 1000w converter and only charge it once every 4-6 weeks.:woot::woot::woot:

http://www.cdstandbypower.com/produc...pdf/12_370.pdf


don't know what any of the numbers mean but my god it's F**KING heavy.

What "new school" fields do you know of that has a mains power supply to connect to?? Most of the tracks here in the UK do not have power supplies for racers to plug into as they tend to be in the middle of nowhere therefore a 12v battery is essential.

I use a leisure caravan battery which is brilliant. It stores enough charge for both me and the bulk to do a full weekends national without needing to charge it back up

Sorry, but every track I've been to since the Dark Ages has a lap counting system in place that requires 120v power - and the racers are thus supplied with the availablity to use that same power to power up their power supplies. What are you guys using for lap-counting, hand charts?
Even back in the old days, when we were toting 12v batts to the track (and Novak sold gel cells), someone always brought a portable generator that everyone could run an extension cord to so as to power their equipment. Even at large races, with hundreds of racers and many pitting out of trailers, the sound of portable generators is commonplace.
Like I said, haven't seen a 12v battery brought to the track in years and years.

I had no idea you Brits had it so rough. My apologies.
But please don't take me to task when I did offer a full explanation of "do's and dont's" to answer the OPs question in full. ;)

take me to task???

it's an expression - meaning "call someone out," "chew them out," or "questioning what they said or did"...... as you did
otherwise, my post(s) was pretty self-explanitory

Question... Why does almost every post, thread etc quite often turn into nit picking one upmanship style nonsense. to the man not from the uk..Good advice but i dont think mains power is availiable so battery only...:(.. See,how easy was that :thumbsup:

Thats what internet forums are for arent they? You can sit behind your PC and say whatever you want without the face to face repurcussions?? :thumbsup:

hehe only joking mate. I was in a bad mood yesterday so felt a bit "niggly". Ive made similar pleas to you in the past where threads have gotten needlessly out of hand

It kinda works like this - when a response specifically quotes another members previous posting, or they call them out specifically, or question the veracity of the info they've posted, or open their own response with a question ... they're likely to get a response.

See how easy that was :thumbsup:




Maybe if people would spend more time actually answering the OP instead of taking someone to task, or nit picking one upmanship style nonsense, or lecturing others like they're their mum, the threads might be way cleaner. ;)

The irony of this thread us quite amusing