I remenber being told by someone when I first bought my '53 Packard a year and a half ago that I could put a 9 volt tractor battery and not fry my starter, lights, ect., is this true and is there anything else I would need to do to make this work. As a pre-emtive (sp) strike I am planning on switching over to 12 volt eventually so don't tell me to switch it over, I will. The reason I ask this is I toasted my current battery (forgot my charger wasn't automatic on 6 volt) and just need to get a new battery to drive it, but would like a little more cranking juice for when she's cold.
hey, I heard you can get an 8 volt tractor battery and use that without worrying about your accessories. I'm not sure how to get it charged properly though, is there something you can do to the voltage regulator to compensate for that?
We have put 8 volt batterys in a number of cars with great success. You can play with the voltage regulator to bump up the charge. It will shorten the life of the bulbs somewhat.
Buy a second 6v and run the together. run only the starter off the pair of them, until you get all the bulbs you need. For fun we used to turn on all the lights just to watch them pop, then changed them out to 12v. Get more CCA out of two 6v VS one 12v battery
I used a 8 volt battery for my 49 dodge for a long time. It charged good on the 6 volt system I never had any problems. I heard about and tried to play with the voltage regulators, but in the end I didnt have to do anything to it.
Like von zipper said i found a place a time ago that still made a 6-12 set up for my old stude out of south gate,ca . Basically it was two 6 volts with like a ford solenoid on top that would combine them to start and, and then run on one. Easy set up, just add another switch to make it crank in addition to having the key on for the ignition circut. The starter dosen't mind the 12v- and it worked pretty flawlessly for the remainder i had the car. Before i would have to let it sit about 30 minutes before it would even consider turning over, after - a quick zing and it was alive. Check around for commercial battery places that deal in odd setups for equipment. good luck, danny
I've run a 6v system on my '37 Chevy coupe for 20+ years. Works great, but wire, especially ground, connections have got to be really clean for perfect connection and the correct wire gage used to lessen voltage drop as much as possible. Nothing wrong with 6v systems, they ran them for many years. The main reason for switching to 12v was that the car manufacturers were adding more & more electrical accessories and 12v only need half the gage wire needed for 6v systems........smaller wires = less cost. My 2¢
I'm going to be switching over to 12 volt to run air bags and door poppers. Other wise I probably would stay 6 volt. Oh and I wouldn't mind a stereo.
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