fishoutofwater

For a couple of years I have been running these accessories without any problems:

4 - square KC offroad lights on front lightbar
2 - square KC offroad lights on rear lightbar
4 - 6" Round KC offroad lights
Inverter
Warn Powerplant Winch/ air compressor

All of these units are hooked up directly to the battery with inline switches to control each one separately. As I said before I didn't have any issues with them until last week when I hooked up a CB radio and now there seems to be too much of a load on the battery to start the Jeep. Battery holds a full charge and works fine (I had it checked out) but it can not start the Jeep. What do I need to do to run all of these things. I have them all switch off when I try to start the Jeep, but the battery still can not handle it.

Some of my thought on fixing the situation:

1) Add an auxiliary Battery and directly hook all accessories to that battery
2) hook up an auxiliary fuss box and run all accessories though it

Are these the solutions? Do I need to do them both? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

grodgers

Turn all the in-line switches off before you start your jeep?

JK-Ford

With all the switches off, it should be like nothing extra is there. I think that you did something to kill a cell in the battery. Just testing with a meter will not show the capacity of the battery.

JINGLES

If you have all accessories switched off; then there is no load on the battery from those accessories. It sounds like it's time to replace the battery. I would definitely go with a dual battery setup with a "smart isolator" which will keep both batteries charged properly without over burdening the alternator. Go to Benchmark-designs and read up on their system. I have it; and it works great.

JINGLES

Hello again to JK-Ford. You beat me to it! OP, when you had the battery checked did they use a LOAD TESTER; or just a simple volt meter? You must use a load tester; which puts a large load on the battery during the test to check it's deep charge reserve power. Will the battery run your lights when the Jeep is not running? If not; then it's time for a new battery.

fishoutofwater

They are always in the off position when I start the jeep but I still do not have enough cranking power to start the jeep. I'm not sure why they are putting a load on the battery even when they are in the off position.

JK-Ford

X2 "JINGLES"
Is any of your accessories actualy operating? Is the lights on? is the winch motor running?. Only then will you have a load on the battery. You loaded the battery the last time that you operated to many of these devices at one time. You killed one or more of the battery cells. This in turn will not allow the battery to charge to a deep enough capacity to crank the engine. Truly - the lights are on but nobody is home. Replace your battery. Upgrade your charging system. Get dual battery system.

mattonline

If you can't start your Jeep with all your accessories switched off you have a dead battery.

smallzphoto

Maybe a crank start should be your next mod



hahaha....in all seriousness I have one of those "port-a-jump" batteries on my center console for just such an occasion. they are like 20 bucks and help if the batt is dead and noone is around for a jump start.

also.... maybe running 2 batteries is a good idea since you have soo many accesories?

sgmrock

X2...Old battery won't handle the load! New, and better, battery time...