Batteries power every hydraulic setup. Some lighter vehicles can actually run one battery — even just the stock battery — while others want to run 12 batteries for more power. I usually won’t run anything less than two batteries, but it depends on the install.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say you have two batteries. You wire them in series, so that you have a cable running from the + of one battery to the - of the other battery. If you have more batteries, you do the same thing until you’re done. That leaves you with a negative post that’s free at the beginning of the system, and at the other end, a positive post. If you multiply the number of batteries you have by 12V, that’s the total voltage that the last positive post will read. If you have four batteries, that means you’ll have 48 volts.

Without getting too complex, the more voltage you have, the faster your setup will be. Also, a pump will not be able to lift a big block V8 on 12 volts alone. The more voltage, the more power the pumps run. This is why you see heavier cars running more voltage. My Civic hopped up with two batteries in it. My Sierra runs five batteries, and it moves pretty good, but not as fast as the Civic.

Now you need to ground the negative post to keep power moving. Basic DC electrical theory tells you that power runs from negative to positive, so the batteries have to be grounded for the pumps to get power. You could run the ground directly to the frame with a bolt, but that’s not safe. We’ll get into why later, but I like to run a welding twist-on connector underneath the front of my seat. I run 2/0 welding cable from the back battery all the way to the front of the truck. This gives me a quick disconnect to the system should anything go wrong, or should I want to disconnect power to the hydraulics when I park, or for security or whatever. I then bolt the other end to a seat bolt or directly to the frame.

Another note here: The number of batteries that you run also depends on the number of pumps that you have. The more pumps, the less work each motor has to do, so the less battery power you need — to a point. It ends up being a guesstimate based on weight, which really isn’t that difficult to figure out. Most of the time you’re looking at between three to six batts, depending on the weight of the truck.  I’ve seen two-pump duallies running three batts, so it can be done, but it’s slow.

Next we’ll discuss how the power goes from the batteries to the pumps: solenoids.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 11:57 am and is filed under Custom Ride. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.