Quote:
Originally Posted by zacs
not exactly, Mike. The way he does it is fine. The draw down from a weak battery is slow. When he switches to both, he gets the combined power of both batts. If one is weak, it will still be adding to total. If both are weak, at least he will still be getting the combined efforts. If you then run on both, and one has lost ability to hold charge, both batts will equilibrate to lowest voltage. So switching to both for start is fine. You just don't want to sit on both.
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I know its slow, that's why I said if the engine starts right away he'll be fine. But I'll bet you dollars to doughnut that if the engine doesn't start right away he'll forget all about the battery setting while he trouble shoots the engine and by the time he gets around to trying it again one battery will have substantially depleted the other. You cannot get the "combined power" of both batteries, the best you can get is the max CCA of one battery, if the second one is not at max charge it can only take away. The only way you can get the power of both combined is if they are wired in series but then you would have a 24 volt system.