Selecting the most suitable battery for your car is crucial. It’s more vital than selecting your car battery because a road vehicle can be stopped in the middle of the street and repaired. But a car in the middle of the journey needs emergency rescue! If you have been asking yourself what size battery I need for my car for quite a long time, this article will end your quest today.
So choosing the suitable cell needs to be taken care of pretty seriously. You have to keep multiple factors in mind before you get one for your car.
What To Know Before You Pick A Battery
To determine the perfect-suiting battery for your car, there are four things you need to take care of.
- What type of battery do you want?
- What amperage do you need?
- Figure out the number of cells you need to run in a parallel
- How much is crank ampere needed?
If you can figure out these questions, you can easily end up selecting the right battery for your car pretty conveniently.
What Type of Battery Do You Need?
There are a number of battery options you have that you can use in your car. The lead-acid, Absorbed Glass Mat, Gel, and Lithium-ion are some of the most common ones. Here’re some brief discussions on different types of batteries. Remember, the battery is used to open your garage’s gate, just as it helps to start your vehicle.
So it is essential to know the type of battery so that you can find the best battery for gate opener, just like the vehicle.
Let’s move to know the type of battery.
What Size of Battery Do I Need for My Car?
Lead-Acid
Also known as the flooded battery, these batteries are quite usual to see and use. Almost all industry uses lead-acid cells. It works by mixing sulfuric acid with distilled water. This way, it forms an electric reaction between a couple of posts that are threaded by lead-alloy. These batteries come at a low price with high output.
It is a widely used battery for almost all types of vehicles and is also used in the solar system. It is also used in ocean-going boats or ships. Solar and marine batteries are relatively robust.
Absorbed Glass Mat
Commonly known as AGM, this type of battery uses the same mixture of sulfuric acid and distilled water and keeps the mix in a fiberglass mat. It is kept separated from plates. The batteries come with a fast-charging capacity with high power output.
Gel Battery
Gel batteries are prepared by a mixture of sulfuric acid, silica gel, and distilled water and then fumed in a tube. When the formation takes place, the reaction makes the water fume get back into the water. Gel batteries can be used in areas where ventilation is quite scarce.
Lithium-ion Battery
Mixing ions between positive and negative plates, lithium-ion batteries are produced. These batteries are expected to last longer than the other types and are relatively maintenance-free, as well.
How To Measure Amperage?
You can’t go oversized or undersized when it comes to fitting the battery in the car. It’s a must that you measure the battery’s amperage to make sure it’s worth it or not before you even try it. Otherwise, the wrong-sized battery will damage your car’s internal electrical system and can cause a long-run problem for you.
That’s why you need to calculate your car’s power requirement before you even start searching for a battery.
To do that, you may need to take readings on a regular basis. Apply the formula W=IV. You can use a sheet to keep track of your findings every hour to get an average.
Suppose you are running a 10-watt appliance on a system that comes with 12-V power. It will need 1.2 AH. And if you are running it for 10 hours at a stretch, it will need 12 AH.
Depending on the Amp Hour you found on average through the sheet, you can pick your battery’s size. To help you out with that, you always have the Battery Council on your side. They have come up with a size chart against the Amp Hour result. You can pick your size from that chart easily.
How To Figure Out The Number Of Cells?
When you total all the Amp Hour readings that need replacing, it will help you figure out how many deep cycle batteries you would need to wire parallelly to keep your car moving.
How Much is Crank Ampere Needed?
Now, why do you need to know the cranking ampere requirement? Well, you need it because it determines how many amps you actually need to start the car’s engine. It’s a measurement of the highest number of amps the battery can deliver for 30 seconds in a 0-degree Fahrenheit temperature.
But that, too, without dropping it beneath the voltage requirement. Usually, depending on which battery you are using, it’s between 10.5 or 7.5 Volts.
As for the case that you don’t know for sure what is the clamp amp requirement of your car, worry not. Get a clamp meter and simply clamp the device to the lead into the starter. This will give you a proper measurement of your crank requirement.
After you have made sure that you have all these factors checked, you can easily determine which battery size you need for your car.
Final Words
If the question ‘what size battery do I need for my car‘ has been bothering you for a long time, we hope this article will make it easier for you to decide. Follow these guidelines that we have laid down here to get to your favorite car battery.
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