Battery questions

[dixonge]

So the pass. Side is for the starter. Is the driver's side for glow plugs?

Can they be connected in parallel to crank up the amps?

[Mikey's250]

The batterys are connected in series and power is pulled from them both to power all the necessary equipment.

[jdalhaus]

I thought thats how they were??

[6.0GitRdone]

Actually they ARE in Parallel from the factory for the purpose of more current capacity.
A 'series circuit' would be where the positive would connect to the negative of the other battery, and you would use the other 2 remaining terminals as your pos. and neg. to the truck to make 24 volts. (and if you did that on your superduty it would let out lots of magic smoke)

[dixonge]

Originally Posted by 6.0GitRdone

Actually they ARE in Parallel from the factory for the purpose of more current capacity.
A 'series circuit' would be where the positive would connect to the negative of the other battery, and you would use the other 2 remaining terminals as your pos. and neg. to the truck to make 24 volts. (and if you did that on your superduty it would let out lots of magic smoke)

So then from the factory they *should* be combining the amps from both batteries for both the glow plugs and the starter, right?

I need to see what batteries the previous owner put on this thing....

[troid123]

Originally Posted by dixonge

So the pass. Side is for the starter. Is the driver's side for glow plugs?

Can they be connected in parallel to crank up the amps?

they are already wired together..

[dixonge]

ok, appears that I have Durastart 850cca batteries on this thing. Need to test those cells tomorrow.

I'm confused a bit by the wiring though. The positive cable runs across the top of the radiator in-between the two batteries. But both of the negative cables appear to go down to ground. If the negative terminals aren't connected directly to each other, doesn't that break the parallel circuit? Or do they connect across the engine block?

[Mikey's250]

Originally Posted by dixonge

ok, appears that I have Durastart 850cca batteries on this thing. Need to test those cells tomorrow.

I'm confused a bit by the wiring though. The positive cable runs across the top of the radiator in-between the two batteries. But both of the negative cables appear to go down to ground. If the negative terminals aren't connected directly to each other, doesn't that break the parallel circuit? Or do they connect across the engine block?

Thats why I assumed they were in series^

[fdchief]

a ground is a ground no matter if they are connected or if they are connected to a common termination point... ie the negative terminals are both landed on the chassis somewhere.... and when you connect the positive with the positive it basically keeps the load the same ie 12volts, but ups the amp hours basically your two batteries just became one larger battery......

[dixonge]

Originally Posted by fdcapt

a ground is a ground no matter if they are connected or if they are connected to a common termination point... ie the negative terminals are both landed on the chassis somewhere.... and when you connect the positive with the positive it basically keeps the load the same ie 12volts, but ups the amp hours basically your two batteries just became one larger battery......

OK, thanks for that info. All of the diagrams I've seen do not include a grounding scenario so I was confused...

So theoretically, if my batteries are fully charged I should be providing 1700 amps to the starter. How many amps to the glow plugs? The same? The batteries are 850cca and 1000ca each.