I relocated my battery to the bed and now the truck wont start. It acts like the battery is dead. I ran a 4ga wire from the neg to the drivers side rear header bolt, a 4ga wire from the stock battery connector to the rear bumber where the battery cutoff is, then 4ga to the battery. I did order some 0ga wire to replace the 4ga and going to move the 4ga wire to the alternator. any other tips? Will this be NHRA legal?

 

How short of ground you have. Shouldn't be no longer 18"

 

My guess is something is loose or making a bad connection.

The upgrade in cable will help some, but it shouldn't be holding you back that bad.

My ol' 6.2L Diesel absolutely required 2 big batteries to start (especially up here in the arctic) and sometimes after off-roading I would have to tighten the cables back up to make the proper connection. There was a few times I thought I was stranded with dead batteries (out in the middle of nowhere too) but just needed to tighten up all the connections.

 

Okay. I'll put a shorter ground on it because my current one is about 8 ft. Lol

 

How big is your ground cable from the block to the frame? You need a good short cable there, and a good short cable from the battery to the frame.

 

You need a short wire to battery to cab and another to battery to frame. Shorter the better! 4ga is enough

 

Is the cable one continuous piece, or are there connections it is going through? How are the connections on the end? You need to have a very good crimp or solder to transfer the power. First make sure the battery is good. I assume it is the one you used before the relocation and it was working. Heavier gauge cable is always better than lighter. When electricity travels through wire it travels on the outside of the strand. A thicker cable with a very fine strand holds more surface area for the electricity to travel over. Welding cable makes for a very good cable to do a relocation for this reason. So the best thing would be to run a continuous length of wire for the positive with crimped and soldered ends. The negative should be short and connect to the frame. Make sure you have a very good connection from the frame to the block. When the original battery was put in, it was grounded to the block and the small weak grounding straps connected to the frame. Well, you will be using those backwards, so those straps will be supplying the ground to your starter. I would suggest a better ground wire. Crimp and solder a piece from the new wire you get to make that connection.

You could also jump right to the starter with some good jumper cables to see if that fixes your problem, then you will know where the problem is.

 

okay, I have some testing to do tomorrow lol. the ground is one piece from the battery to the block. I will keep that one and add one from the block to fram and battery to frame.

 

This.. There's a reason your battery in the stock location connects directly to the block with the biggest cable. The starter draws a lot of current.

 

Okay. I have about 10 more feet of the 4ga left. I'll add those two grounds tomorrow. Where's the best place to go from the block to the fame?