1996 Chevy Tahoe & YellowTop Optima Dual Battery Set Up Video

okay so today my friend wants to hook up dual batteries to his Tahoe and luckily in this setup he’s already got a second tray for a dual battery so I just thought to record the video and we already took the other battery out over here but we’re gonna add this is gonna be the main starting battery on the left like it always was and we’re just gonna tap off of it and put the secondary battery here cuz he’s gonna have some accessories later that is gonna draw more amperage and he’s already upgraded

his alternator never said it would replace this we’re are put to add this battery we’re gonna add in a yellow top Optima which is the in-between if you don’t know anything about Optima batteries the red one is starting and the yellow one is dual-purpose so it has deep-cycle in starting capability and the blue is completely deep-cycle set this up we got some electrical tape I’ve got some marine terminals so that later on when he hooks up accessories it’s really easy to just tap off of it then we’ll need a cable

that’s gonna go from the negative to the ground of the car and then we’ve got a cable to connect the positive side of the main starting battery to the secondary semi deep-cycle battery and then we’re gonna have to modify this a little bit to fit it on there but it’ll work good I’m gonna ground the battery itself back to the frame which should be fine so I only need one of these twist terminals because he’s not gonna need to add any accessories up here off of the negative he’s just gonna need to add

positive back in whatever accessories he adds he can ground back to the frame we’re not in the backyard we’re in a driveway so he’s a driveway McKinney I have for a sec so whatever I got a GED in GPS damn it’s hot yeah you can like talk to me it’s not like I’m not gonna edit it out later you can act normal hey so you’re gonna want to put this preferably on the frame Hey coming off of this second battery or even if you have to somewhere off of the body that’s a solid piece of metal but

you’re gonna want to try and find a boat that already exists because it’s a pretty solid connection a big hole you don’t want to have to drill another hole and then put a new bolt in you want to find another bolt hole that already exists take it out and then sand around it real good which I’ll show you and then screw it back down onto it all right so I found a bolt hole that I think I’m gonna be able to use but I have to sand it down and then get my meter out and test it to make sure it

has good continuity first I couldn’t really find one off of the frame so it’s gonna be off of the body but it should work I’m gonna use this multi-tool which is really not the right tool for this but I’m trying to cheat them to be quick so [Music] actually that worked pretty damn good I gotta get my meter now that I should probably explain this uh on your multimeter you want to go to ohms to the lowest setting and you’re just trying to see if there’s continuity so right now

it says infinity if you don’t know how to read that that means nothing’s connected but if you see I connect these two together and it’s going to give me a reading of almost zero because there’s almost no resistance you want there to be as little resistance as possible now the only problem with this is that this is not gonna show how many amps can’t go through a system as obviously I’m putting a small amount of charge through it however almost everything in the vehicle is grounded to either the body

the engine which the engine goes to the chassis and then back to the battery so as long as it’s connected to a good piece of metal that’s connected to the rest of the metal you should be good on the amperage part so right now I’m gonna try and go to the frame ground on the starting battery to this computer plate right here so that I can see if I’m getting a good solid reading through the whole car then when I got a touch over this is just one of the ground straps for the vehicle and then so then if you

come over now that I’m connected on both of those I’ve got almost no resistance so that’s a good sign that I found a good ground to use and so that’s what we’re gonna use because it’s convenient I’m just gonna use the original bolt that I pulled out of this plate before I sanded it in the boat no no I shouldn’t need to stay in the boat it would be nice if it were not coated like this but at the same time this plate is gonna be touching it against here which is really

what I need you just want to make sure that’s nice and tight so it’s a good connection there and I was planning on grounded to the frame so I got a little too long as a wire but it’s all right we can just coil it up down in here and it shouldn’t be a big deal now because this you don’t really need to at this point but because this came with an extra auxilary for the ground I’m gonna go ahead and make a small ground off of this and connect it to the body over here [Music]

this is not how a work van should look [Laughter] yeah that’s true verify his kitchen is equally as dirty so make getting the package down there but it’s a six robot pick those up on ebay don’t ask me how I know I’ll show you how to strip of wire but you should probably know or not be touching that car beat rap you want me to do it it’s like the only thing strong on you anymore as you built [ __ ] raining dude no cussing might be an 11 year old trying to change his [ __ ] wires out it’s like dad’s truck I found

a hole that was already there that I’m just putting a self-tapping through she say Optima was a battery you would recommend yeah they’re just really expensive so if you want to do stuff the right way with the top-notch stuff it’s the top of the line they have other medium cycle batteries even like autozone brand that will do the same thing you’re just getting kind of a lesser product it’s kind of like anything else you get what you pay for don’t be a cheap [ __ ] you get this right

oh be wet it’ll never work again what put it in your 1950s [ __ ] CIA briefcase it works man it’s cheap see I had to take this the standard cable this is a perfect length to buy from the store without having to go to auto store and get different kind of cable but yet to cut off the terminal so that you have a terminal on both sides so we had to buy the two gauge because that’s what it is and if you don’t have the right tools it’s pretty hard to crimp on there but you want to make sure it’s on there

super firm and never gonna come off period yeah I mean I guess I have to assume that people know nothing which really you know nothing you shouldn’t be working on your car you should at least know a little bit but you don’t want a positive terminal of your battery or any cable coming off of it to touch the ground or you’re gonna have a big spark problem and it’s not gonna be a good day so you want to make sure except for the part that connects to the battery is completely protected so that it won’t

groundout cows delicious alright so at this point we’re ready to actually hook the two together which you want that to be the last thing you do cuz once you hook the positives up then it’s pretty much live negatives aren’t really gonna do much we’re not my little [ __ ] tool right here oh no sorry snot I have this nips dude give me back my crescent wrench laugh it up [ __ ] watch me wire this [ __ ] see your car blows up okay so now we’re ready to hook up the original cables back up and positive and negative

yeah cuz there’s a certain depth that’s the way all the batteries are they’re soft [ __ ] junk okay it’s enough trying to tell you man I don’t care what it is you don’t know things instead okay we’re gonna hook up this side which is the negative well that’s gonna be part of your [ __ ] problem see ya if this looks like this then don’t be trying to use it I should have caught that beforehand when I pulled that out of the old one this is a this person’s fault not mine

so I gotta clean this off now because this is the thread from the old battery so I hope I didn’t [ __ ] up this new one there you go okay so this is an expensive kit this is from when I was a mechanic it’s over a hundred dollars but this is a wreath reading kit it’s not a tap and die there’s a big difference between a tap and die and a wreath redder this is just gonna clean up threads that have been screwed up so you got to find the one this has metric and SAE this 3/8 seems to be fitting on there pretty good so

once it gets to a certain point you kind of got to see where it’s at but yeah that’s that feels pretty good so you take it and run that over the old thread and it should straighten it back out again and I’ll strip anything out what she said he put jb weld in it which is non conductive so i’m not really sure why he did that but see you scraped all that off and then now if you look at that how much better it looks than it did before so I can’t we do a pretty good job okay then bring it on there a

couple more times just to bring anything extra out so what do you do if it strips out the battery terminal insert well you’re [ __ ] [ __ ] well I’ll take that back I’ve never tried or will try it right now just for the [ __ ] of it if it’s a 3/8 thread then if you have a rethread get you have the other side too the thing about it is the middle and the battery is really soft so that’s how they get you it depends on how much you [ __ ] it up but if I run this through that fits in there really tight so

actually I know it’s pretty good were you able to see that on your [ __ ] stupid hands in the way but not just cleaned up hopefully it should fit in here good now which it does you just can’t over tighten these like he did cuz then you’ll have to JB well [Music] that’s pretty tight okay alright so we got the negative things figured out now it’s time to put the positive on and that’s the last thing that we have to do so that’s already hooked in here now you don’t want when you put this on you

don’t want the other side to touch anything oh that’s great so hold that all right so then you take the other side and we’ll worry about attaching it down here a minute but you’re gonna want to screw this off and I have a feeling I’m going to need to drill this terminal out unfortunately which I do so we’re uh pause the video for a minute and drill this hole out all right so we drilled it out off-camera to fit this post that you’re gonna have that problem if you get these connectors but he did it and

it’s fine now and then we got to figure out a way to run this across and over so all I’m gonna do is loosen that back up a little bit since I have some extra slack pull that tight all right from here put it on me from this point really you don’t need any more instruction if you don’t know how to use wire ties and tuck wires out of the way then I really don’t know what to do for you but now we’re done hooking the dual batteries up and we’re gonna start the car [Applause]