need more electrical power

I have two 15's, speakers, a 2400 watt amp and 450 watt. I also am planning to put on a light bar and to light my bandpass box. Would an optima battery be able to handle all this. If not what do I need?

I imagine the optima would be up to the task. You may get light flicker when the subs hit hard, but that is all. If you want to get rid of that then either try a dual battery system or get some capacitors for the amps. I'm sure that Dothedew24_7 can help you with the specifics if he see's this post.

I HIGHLY SUGGEST you upgrade the altenator.....
the dual battery setup will help... Upgrade your battery cables too, like a set from jeepers & creepers...
go with some heavy gauge wires....
check out the Mean Green altenator... it's pricey..
but with lights, 2400 wat amp, and a 400 watt amp, your going to kill your charging sys...
spend a little money, and do some good upgrades

go with the bigger cables, Optima yellow top, and the mean green alt.
you'll be much happier down the road.

It sucks having your stock Alt. go out on you when you least expect it.
that kind of current draw, you'll kill your stock alt.

a yello top optima would deffinatly help aswelll as a cap somewhere around a 2farad would be good. as for the stock alt it is a prety high out put but the wires running from it are way to small to move any current. before you dump a crap load of money in to a new alt i'd sugest upgrading your wires. also what size wire are you running from your battery to your amps.

xtremepyro12 said:

I have two 15's, speakers, a 2400 watt amp and 450 watt. I also am planning to put on a light bar and to light my bandpass box. Would an optima battery be able to handle all this. If not what do I need?

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I recommend what I did. Upgrade all of your wires to much lower guage than stock, this will lower your resistance. Switch to a deep cycle marine battery, and a dual battery setup if possible in your application. lots of smaller batt companies are making good quality spiral cells for a lot cheaper than Optimas. I bought mine at Canadian Tire for the equivalent of $122.00 American. Also, get a higher output alternator. I used a 136 amp OEM replacement from a V8 Grand Cherokee. i followed this writeup here : http://www.bc4x4.com/tech/2004/jeepalt/ no problems so far, and I have been running it for about 3 months.
Beej.

Do you know if that alternator fits all year cherokees? I have a 91 and was wondering if it would be as easy as that writeup says it is.

I already screwed myself with the ford taurus fan in a cherokee because wrangler and grand cherokee guys said it was quick and easy. I don't wanna do something like that again.

A cap wont help the current draw at all- it just gives the amps somthing else to pull from- and also stabilizes the voltage seen by the amp. Yellow tops are OK, but if I was in your shoes, heres what I would do:
- as Culinary_Hooligan said, upgrade the alternator- makes a BIG difference
- upgrade the stock wiring from the battery to fuse box, engine ground, alt., chassis ground- also makes big difference
- look into batteries from Stinger- they kick the crap out of optima, just a lil bit more money- but do it right...

The battery just holds the electricity temporarily until the system uses it. It is the alternator that creates the electricity to be used. You can get the biggest, baddest battery in the world, but if your alternator is not producing enough power to replace what you're using the battery will still, eventually, go dead.

Your battery is fine, unless you're planning to operate all these things when the engine is off. The alternator is what you need to replace.

Personally, I'd splurge on the Mean Green ALT. it's pricey, but worth it.
I'm buying one soon. i'll be running a winch, about 7 off-road lights redi-arc welder, etc....

even higher output alts. off of other vechicles are just not designed to handle a ton of current draw, and will fail prematurely. Granted they will last a lot longer than your stocker cherokee alt..... and as dothedew said, the stinger batteries are damn nice too....

but altenator, altenator, altenator, oh yeah and battery cables and grounds..... should be your first priority.

dmillion said:

The battery just holds the electricity temporarily until the system uses it. It is the alternator that creates the electricity to be used. You can get the biggest, baddest battery in the world, but if your alternator is not producing enough power to replace what you're using the battery will still, eventually, go dead.

Your battery is fine, unless you're planning to operate all these things when the engine is off. The alternator is what you need to replace.

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right- you'll see the biggest improvement by upgrading alternator- all the other things I mention will improve your situation as well- just not as much as the alternator- mean greens are pretty good- I've even seen them in competitions