CCA vs Ah

My Suzuki DF115A is specified for a (minimum) 100Ah 12V lead acid starter battery with a CCA 0f 216, according to its manual.

Looking around I see that regular 100Ah batteries of this type have a CCA of >700,
and batteries with a CCA of 216 are around 30Ah

I wonder why Suzuki specifies the 1ooAh version, whereas a 30Ah has sufficient CCA ??

Big thanks,
V.

 

...sorry, CCA216 concerns the DF115 model, DF115A specifies 512CCA

 

No reason you need a deep cell for starting unless that is the only battery.

For cca, you want something 500-800.

 

No harm in having more than enough 'Cold Cranking Amps' (CCA).

It is also a good assumption that those are minimum requirements/recommendations.

 

I also have a second, 90Ah semi-traction ('leisure') battery on board that feeds all other applications.

 

The Ah capacity is also related to charging amperage, so a motor with a decent alternator output will want a decent capacity so it can be charged efficiently. Most 100 Ah marine start batteries can accept 25 amps bulk charge rate.

 

Thank you: the alternator output on a DF115A is 12v/40A.
FYI: second 90Ah leisure battery on board is charged via a Xantrex Echo charger, that charges this 2nd battery with the surplus charge of the starter battery when it's fully charged.

 

Consider that all those specifications are for new - good condition batteries, and normal conditions, but if say you experienced a week of extremely cold weather, and you haven't started the engine in a while, and a battery cell is beginning to fail, and your fuel is a bit old, and any amount of other small issues occur, THEN you may need every amp available to crank, and also not drop voltage to the engine's fuel injection or management system. When the S hits the fan, that's when you need plenty of CCA. Older engines not such an issue, but computerised systems can be fussy - computer says no!

 

"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that..."

 

I dealing with something annoying similar right now. I have some new-fangled golf carts with new-fangled chargers that claim they do a better job and improve the life of battery sets (some of which run just under $4k to replace). Problem is they are rather finicky and don't want to charge slightly degraded batteries. So they don't improve the life of the battery - they want you change them out a year sooner than you would with a regular old dumb charger. And the chargers cost $700 new and are considered throw-away items. There are no fuses or replaceable protections and no repair boards for them. I'm not impressed. I have about $10k worth of old Trojan T-145s on the shop floor right now that I'm trying to resurrect, but they will never work on the modern chargers. Just need to hook them direct to a solar panel and use for emergency power. I'm cycling them with an old dumb charger from the 70s.

 

welcome in nw

 

I think you can cheat sometimes and parallel another good battery and get the smart chargers to charge both.

 

... and burn up a $700 charger, which is what got me started in this mess - the owner just parked the cart for 2 years with about $4k of batteries in it because the charger died. Now I'm trying to fix it up and sell it. These chargers - the on-board versions - are integrated into the wiring harness and switching to an off-board charger isn't trivial.

 

Yeah, you can do a lot of questionable stuff with an old 3-coil voltage regulator and a multi-meter.

 

Old dumb chargers also work resurrecting nickel metal hydride, and nickel cadmium re-chargeable batteries when the 'smart' charger doesn't want to, for your AAA, AA, C, D, etc. domestic cells. Give them a few minutes dumb charge, then the smart charger is tricked into charging them. I get an extra year or more out of them that way, before the smart one says "i'm sorry, I'm afraid I can't do that . . .". Dumb chargers worked OK for decades before being 'improved', and 'modernised'.