The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk New 6 V battery

Where, in your experience, is the best place to get a new battery for my truck. It is still original 6 volt. The battery in it didn't like the cold this morning and my truck wouldn't start. I assume it's the battery. If you have other ideas, let me know. Thanks, Jerod.

I usually get them at Sam,s club or Carquest. The battery specialtie shops are also good. With 6 volt system the whole combination is important. The plugs & points. Make shure your battery cables are heavy gauge & connections clean & tight. After it is running check the charging voltage. It should be 7-7 1/2 volts. Your choke cable needs to work good.

Tractor Supply (TCS, Campbell's) stores would work. You might want to try and find an 8 volt battery. You can us it in you 6 volt system and it will give you a little more zip when starting.

I get mine at a local farm supply store for about $35. They are pretty old technology but still last me 3-5 years of daily driving, including this morning at 15 below.

i've gotten my 6 volt battery from Agri-Fleet its for my ferguson tractor in my experiance i do not like 6 volt systems and i would like to switch my tractor to a 12 volt but i do not know if its is posible cause it doesn't start to well even when its 80 degrees out and in the winter it don't have a prayer 5 cranks our so and its done, but 6 volt batterys don't last me to long cause i have to crank on em so much so lot of times i just have to pull start my tractor then it fires up fast and perfect every time
Nate

JRod,

Since I'm not familiar with any of the farm supply stores being in Boulder, and the closes one I do know of would be in Longmont...

I would suggest that you just head over to Checkers, Auto-Zone, or one of those other chains that I know are there.

They should have one sitting on the rack, just waiting for you. Probably around $40-$50.

Geez, what a deal!! I write the above post and go to make a run in my '48 after sitting for 6 hours. Doesn't start and the battery goes down trying!!!! I should have kept my mouth shut.

12 volt seems like a mighty fine idea.

(I drive only three miles to work so I think there hasn't been enough charging time in the cold, cold weather. I think we'll look for a place out of town.)

Wally - 3 miles should recharge it after a normal start. or ya need a 6v alternator - should put a battery blanket on to keep that sucker warm down there under the floor, 6v battery's do take a worse hit from cold, in my experience - might be part of the reason they moved the battery to the top of the engine compartment!

Bill

It sounds like your tractor needs a new set of battery cables, of 2/0 gauge. The 4 gauge 12 volt cables are too light. Heavy gauge battery cables not only start the vehicle faster, they loose less power to heat, which can be about half of the cranking power of the battery when starting.

Benn buyin' mine from Sam's Club for the last eight years or so...

Just make sure you get a Group 1 if your battery is still under the floor...Group 2 battery won't fit in the battery holder...

Sufficient battery cables are critical: no smaller than #2...#0 or #2/0 is even better !

Never had cold-start problems with my six-volt Bolts...rather the opposite: darn 235s won't crank when they're hot !

Good luck !

napa.

if they didn't have it on the shelf, they had it there the next day.

not as inexpensive as some of the farm impliment houses, but they are getting harder to find in my neighborhood.

My FLAPS carries them. No ordering necessary.

Every time I got another stovebolt,I've always bought the biggest,baddest six volt I could make room for from NAPA.Never had a start problem on any of 'em,hot or cold.
Speed

Thanks for all the input. Warmed up enough that I got my truck started this morning. I'm thinking about getting an Optima battery. Any thoughts on them? (I also noticed that there is a thread in the Electrical Bay about them)

JRod,

I got one in the newer of my 52's. Seems to be a good battery. Previous owner said it's been in there for at least 6 years that he knows of, and it starts the truck up everytime I've tried.

It's smaller than the regular 6-volts though, so you about have to figure out a tie-down method, so it aint bouncing around down there.

Optimas are great.

Make sure you have the proper size battery cables - undersize cables will cause all sorts of headaches.

I've got a 6v Optima in a 41' pickup,... No complaints, other than high cost. I hope it last a little longer than a standard wet battery. Wouldn't fit the battery box. Have heard it will fit diagonally, but I had to trim a little tab off the bottom of the battery to mount it. No harm done and been running it about a year now. If I remember its about 850 cca.-------------
Tony

I just wanna say that if your 6 volt truck won't start fairly easy in -15 degree weather, there's something wrong with something and it ISN'T the fact that you're running a 6V system.

Points, plugs, wires, cap, rotor, coil fuel system, carb.. check all that stuff.

Sitting face in the wind with -30+ below wind chill and -15 degree ambient temp my '46 1/2 ton pops right off with a 6V battery that I bought a year ago from my local farm store.

Yea, it dosen't turn over nearly as fast as it does when it's 80 outside, but within 3 revolutions she's running.. and my truck is a piece of crap.

So if you have to crank and crank, [censored] with the choke, slaughter a chicken on the hood and recite some sort of swahilli witch doctor chant while wearing a straw skirt to get your truck to start, your problem can't possibly be that it's because it's a 6V system.. it's because it's a 6V system that isn't properly maintained.

Before you fix the truck, do a video of the swahili witch doctor chant in the straw skirt. I'd really like to see that!!!

Fumblin,

I always enjoy your posts... You're very good at painting a picture. And they're easily translated into video in my mind.

But I gotta say, I'm with Rich, I want to see the real video.

Tweak, I don't know that anything was trimmed off mine, but it does sit in there at an angle.

"So if you have to crank and crank, [censored] with the choke, slaughter a chicken on the hood and recite some sort of swahilli witch doctor chant while wearing a straw skirt to get your truck to start, your problem can't possibly be that it's because it's a 6V system.. it's because it's a 6V system that isn't properly maintained."

This should go into the Hall of Fame of Basic Stovebolt Truths.

[img]http://www.oldtruckstuff.com/voodoo.gif[/img]

....for those who don't have vivid imaginations.

Hey that's the witch doctor from Scooby Doo, ain't it? And is he working his magic on a Dodge? Good stuff, as usual, Frank. LOL

Tweak, as long as your wiring is in good shape (no low-level shorts), an Optima will last a long time. In a problematic wiring system in my '77 Corvette, an Optima lasted about 3-4 times longer than a standard wet-cell battery (I've since purchased another Optima, and figured out the problem).