The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay Optima Battery -enough cranking amps?

I just purchased an Optima battery for my 57 truck. The battery has 760 cold cranking amps at 0 degrees. I live in Oregon where the temp doesn't get down to 0 very often and I'll mainly be driving this truck in the warmer weather. My motor is a Chevy ZZ4 350. Do you think this will be enough of a battery for this motor??? Thanks, Dave

Dave,

That is a big husky battery...a typical starter for your 350 would pull around 200 amps at the most, and the engine would start in a few turns. I don't know what a ZZ4 is, but if it's a monster, then a gear drive starter AND the Optima would certainly get it going easily in any climate.

Stuart

Thanks for the info Stuart, the ZZ4 is a high performance Chevy 350 crate motor that puts out 355 HP. It has aluminum heads, roller cam and 400 ft. lbs. of torque. I just wasn't sure what was adequate for this type of motor. Thanks for the help! Do you know what a typical truck battery has in the way of cold cranking amps? Thanks again!

Dave,

I don't know about trunk mounted batteries. What I think I know is this...if you scale up the battery cable size to make up for the length of run and subsequent loss of "oink" , your system won't even know the battery is located in the trunk.

Stuart

That I did, used 2 guage wire instead of the standard 4 guage.

I'm into street rods. We use the same battery with the same class of engines as yours and don't have any problems. As you know, as the compression goes up, you gotta have more grunt from your starter and the Optima handles it just fine. Point of interest....we use a high capacity alternator (80+ amps) when we install an electric fan as the SBC orginial fan cuts the radiator to low for good cooling.

Hi and thanks for the info. I'm using a 105 amp alternator and also have an electric fan. I appreciate the feedback on the Optima battery! Sounds like it will have plenty of power.