Got my new bumper on the truck today and thinking about putting two 17" in the bumper and a 36" on top of it... How would I go about doing this? Could my battery power all of them or would i need a bigger battery. And was thinking about running them all to a toggle switch panel so they all have their own switches.

 

i can tell you on mine i am running 2 led round floods, 4 halogen spots. i ran those with one battery and it did fine, but i did recently installed a 2nd battery just so i have 24v stored instead of 12v. just make sure if you do add another battery you hook them in parallel and not in series, that wouldnt be good. reason i did two batteries is i have alot more things to run besides the lights. just added assurance. i would hook it up and turn them all on and see how low your voltage drops, if it drops a good amount you could run them off a 2nd battery or maybe upgrade the alternator for more amps.

 

Huh?

 

 

First off I mean no offense to ya ryan0714!
I'm just pointing out a few things here for others that may look at this.
You hook up batteries in PARALLEL in order to get more AMPS NOT to increase voltage. Which is what you want to carry the load of all the extras. This achieved by attaching the POS(+)1 to POS(+)2 and NEG(-)1&2 to chassis ground.
Now there is devices out there to isolate the two batteries. If you dont there is a good chance that the batteries will draw current (amps) from each other killing themselves, and that's because no two batteries are the same. I'm going to let others chip in on what they have purchased as far as battery isolators

I'm going to jump off my stump here now

 

i didnt say i increased the voltage, i said i have more stored. have over 12v in both batteries, the 2nd is installed as a backup and they feed and charge together. works just fine. as far as amps i said he could get a bigger alternator to get more charging amps if the voltage is to low while running.

 

LOL I'm confused now... but sh*t trying my best to understand what you are saying. You're saying that you can store voltage which just cant be, voltage is not stored energy. I think I see where you are coming from adding the voltage of your "two 12vbatteries=24v stored" speaking like that seems more like an series setup,sorta.

Soo say one did a parallel arrangement on two batteries. Each battery itself contained 12Volts and 1000Amps. The voltage does not change but the Amps get added. That arrangement would have 12Volts and 2000amps. Add another battery to that setup. Now we are at three batteries with a total output of 12Volts and 3000amps.

 

 

were gettin off topic, yes he shoud be fine but no way to really tell till he tried it with the stock setup.

as for me, yea i understand it sounded like a series setup but its not, yes your on the right page with me now, 2 batteries, each holding 12v, 2000amps. they are wired in parallel with the main positive hooked to the primary and the main ground hooked to the secondary, with the parallel cables going -/- +/+. only other thing i would do is get an isolator for the "just in case" that it would try to drain.

 

Forcer is spot on. I think the most batts in the houseboats were around 20 -24 6 volt batts. We made up set's of 6's to make 12V (series), each set was then wired in parallel to another set of 6's wired in series. I was the only tech that did this job at my workplace as most wanted nothing to do with it. You mess up doing that job and well run fast very fast. Btw each 12 volt batt is about equivalent to three sticks of tnt, not something you want to get wrong wiring, yes I have seen batts blow up not good.

When I install dual batts I get two new batts of the same make, size and close a manufacturing date as possible (never use miss match batt's for a dual setup, if one batt die's you must replace both), for the Ram I would not use a cheap isolator get a top brand name. I do not run a neg cable over to the other main batt, 2nd batt neg goes to the block.

As for a alt upgrade in amp's he can do the 160 amp alt out of the 2001 rango 5.9. Wiring should be upgraded where need to match the 160 output.

There are basic batt rule's one should follow and this info is out on the web, more than I can type here.

Led light bars don't pull anywhere near the power of old reg incandescent lamps.