Dual Batteries for Any Vehicle

We’ve all experienced that dreaded sound under the hood when you twist the key: Click. Click Click. A dead battery is more of an inconvenience around town (depending where you live), but out in the boonies it takes on a real significance of the worst kind. If you’re smart enough to wheel with friends instead of by yourself, maybe someone has some jumper cables, or maybe some tools to swap batteries. Better yet, if you are lucky you’ll have parked on a hill and you can bump start the beast. OK, so you are by yourself, have no tools, and drive an auto-box 4x4. You lose. You could spend that freezing night out in the middle of nowhere and hope someone noticed you are missing. Yeah, right.

The miserable scenario we just painted for you is to let you know that there is another way, which is simply another battery. We’ve carried a spare Optima with us for years, safely wrapped up in a sleeping bag under the seat. These batteries don’t leak acid, can be stored in any position, and can be slapped on top of another Optima battery without cables to emergency jump an engine.

However, the real way to be safe in the boonies is to install a dual battery system, and one that doesn’t screw around with your stock setup. Standard battery isolators only have the ability to charge and discharge one way, while we want to be able to choose which battery is on line, and which isn’t. The old fashioned way of battery selection is to use a big, monster rotary switch found in many emergency vehicles and motorhomes. That big round sucker has positions for Battery 1, Battery 2, Both, and Off. This is a durable unit, but big and cumbersome for our rigs, and it requires major electrical wiring to hook it up.

There is another way we found, and the simplicity makes this setup a no-brainer. Painless Wiring offers a dual battery controller that hooks up with a switch, solenoid, indicator lights, and a few wires for a quick hookup. The universal nature of the kit allows virtually any vehicle to sport dual batteries, even when there’s not any room under the hood. We installed the whole shebang in about an hour in our Ultimate A1, including mounting the Optima battery from Performance Products and running cables. Check out how simple it is, and never be caught with dead cells again.