Well Thump.. you had too have had enough ground
for the starter to work..thats the highest load
you have.. so dont feel bad.. but get it right
while you can.. and I know that little ground
wasnt the only one

Someone didn't listen to Monte tell everyone to run a ground to the front of the car

No one is perfect and thats a long long battery life. Ive always ran three main grounds, battery to body by deck lid hinge, battery to rear inner bumper and same sized heavy cable as the positive to rear of one cylinder head.

I get 5-6 years out of a farm tractor type interstate battery.

I take total blame for sure and I get pissed at myself for the stupid stuff I do but live and learn and yes, I have other grounds up front and maybe that saved me but the main ground was attached to the battery's but was just laying in the trunk ...........Good news is that the 1000 cca Auto-zone bad boy spins it over very fast and hopefully the car hooks as good as my 1.33 60 ft.........thankxxx, you guys rock.........

I went through the to little ground on a local racers street car this past weekend, he had used a positive battery cable he had off another junk car for the ground cable. He had a coil of #2 battery cable about 8 ft. long and wanted me to wire the car from a six cylinder stick car to street hemi motor with a 727 in a 1963 Dodge Polara 440 he had owned forever with the battery in the trunk, I bought a 6 ft. piece of #2 battery cable and a straight splice to put the two parts together. I solder it together and put a #2 terminal on the starter and battery ends, he had put a battery out of his camper trailer that he knew was old and didn't have any reserve capacity It would turn the starter over about a 270 degrees on the first attempt and stop like a dead battery with the spark plugs in and around 90 degrees on the second attempt
I had two new Ever Ready truck batteries in the shop so I swap his out and put one of those in, it still did the same thing even with a 30 amp charger on the new battery
It was the tiny stock # 4 battery cable used as a ground I added another #4 ground to the inner fender well pinch weld and bingo, it turned over like it should
Stupid me had thought about adding two block grounds up front when I had to pull the tranny out for him and forgot to do that, it wouldn't have help the rear battery ground though, the ground cable needs to match or be bigger than the positive battery cable size

grounds are pretty important, and you almost can't have too many of them. grounds in a fiberglass body car can really be problematic if not done correctly.

Yes, you can have too many grounds...all grounds need to be concentrated from one point, otherwise you can get ground loop noise. Not as important with points ignition, but with more complex EFI injection and Ignition systems, it is important not to induce RF/EMI noise into the ground system, including Ground loop noise.

There are lots of articles on the web for reading.

Mark

you are correct on the noise issue. i was referring to the grounds needed for components to operate correctly. central grounding is the way to correct RFI. sorry if i didn't relay my thoughts in a correct manner. my old mind sometimes doesn't work like it is supposed to.....

After my last Redtop stopped taking a charge out on the road, I went with a Deka AGM. Made by East Penn. Autozone had it, group 34 size, ~$200.

Sorry Moparx, yes you are very correct!

Clean sheet metal for grounding my front and rear side marker lights on my Super-bee are a prime example of what you are saying! Still scraping all of the undercoating off under the fenders.

I have 2 Yellow top Optimas’ in my two cars, but current at idle is very important, as I have 150 amp race Powermaster densos’, but current at Idle is 50-55 amps! I need a race denso that puts out around 90-95 amps at Idle. I do have the small Powermaster deep groove alt. Pulley.

One thing I have noticed, is that the discharge rates of these batteries are not even close, and they drain off of each other...I have been keeping a small battery tender plugged in at all times to make sure they are fully charged.

Optima does make a marine deep-cycle battery, but it takes a completely different mount system.

Mark

The kid at Autozone tried selling me that one but when I asked about the difference and it's charging needs, he got lost w/no answers. What's funnier is when I said I needed a battery for a 72 big block dart w/12.1 compression.........he had to go get help....... Fixed now after an 11:00 pm thrash and back to testing carbs. Thankxxx again guys and this is a TINY screw up compared to some others..........

DEKA are very good batteries...I have some in my motorhome. Boy are they heavy!

My next move is to replace my alternators with Race Densos’ that are around 180 Amps, with 80-95 amps at idle. I think that will keep my batteries in better shape, I at least hope so.

Mark

Finally started my car and this thing cranks like never before.........

Good for you

VERY happy Mike and it even leaned out a carb that was rich yesterday so after a tweak and blast holy chit is all I can say..........

Dom did you go from a dual to a single battery

Yes I did and it starts awesome but still concerned that the extra weight I removed may upset the hook as it did years ago............

thump, did i ever see [or ask for] a pic of your battery terminals ?

No why............My old batteries had top and side posts the new just top post...........

My last Optima experience was not a good one. It got weak in about 8 months, called tech tech and they told me to do a "10A rapid charge", I followed their instructions verbatim which resulted in a split case, then they told me I was on my own. Got pissed and threw a cheapo walmart battery in my satellite and never had a problem after that. I had great luck with Optima up to that point, but that whole situation killed Optima for me. I'm sure there are better AGM options out there.