I'm on the market for a new battery for my FD. This will be for a track day car that occasionally is driven on the street and I will be running E85 (it's a build in progress: I'm not sure if it's going to add a lot of start issues). I see a lot of the AGM batteries on here but only a few Li. Has anyone tried running a battery like the Shorai LFX18? The cold cranking amps are better than the Oddessy PC680 and they are so light it seems like you could get most of the benefits of the battery relocation without moving it. Has anyone else gone this route? Are there other considerations I'm missing?

 

I am very impressed by lithium batteries, I have not upgraded one on either of my rx7's but I did on my motorcycle and it is amazing, super small and light and cranks the motor like a madman compared to regular batteries

 

The Shorai LFX18 has 270 cold cranking amps. By contrast, my Optima Yellow Top has 750. Love the lightness of an Li battery but I don't think you'll be pleased with that low of amps.

 

The yellow top has it beat by far in all performance specs except for two: size and weight. The LFX18 is also an under 3 pound battery. There seems to be a lot of luck with the braille/deka batteries and the oddessy that people run which seem on par peformance wise with the li batteries. The price lands it around the same as the AGMs but for the weight, I don't see the benefit of relocating the battery at this weight and with the thickness, packaging should be easy.

I am willing to give up some performance (750 CCA is great but evidently people are getting by with ~200CCA batteries) but don't want to find that the total amp hours is critical or that they don't handle the current from a car alternator well and destroy themselves or that it has the capacity for 3 good cranks before it is toast.

If no one has done it, I may very well be back on here in the near future saying why you shouldn't...

 

I have a shorai lithium, I cannot remember the amount of amps, Ill look at it and report later.

You will NOT be disappointed. Super small, super lightweight, and cranks the car amazingly.

The downside is that you only get a few seconds of high speed cranking so hopefully your car starts up during that period. Otherwise you must wait a few seconds between cranks.


Lithium is by far the best. I've used the small AGM dry cells, large batteries, etc.

Pic attached showing the size of this Shorai. Thing is so lightweight its unbelievable.

I've let this battery sit for about 8 weeks now during my motor swap without charging. Lets see how well it jumps back on the charger

 

I have the largest Shorai (4lbs) and love it.

If its in a toy car that doesn't get driven every day get the charger and keep it on storage mode.

I too have tried other dry cells and Optima batteries and the Shoria is my favorite so far.

However, it does have a fairly small capacity so you can't leave your radiator fan on and engine off after a really hot track session and walk away expecting the fan to run until the engine is cool and have enough left to start the car.

Best if you have a turbo timer to cool everything down to where the fan would shut off instead. Well, I do, but didn't think to use it.

 

This is what I was looking to hear, thank you both.

Blue TII, did you do a battery relocation on yours as well? Given the weight/size, I am not sure if there is even much benefit. I'm not sure if under hood temps are going to make a big issue.

 

Exactly, all I did was lay the Shorai battery flat as if I had relocated it the weight of the wire would have exceeded the weight of the battery.

 

Very helpful. Thanks a bunch for the info blue.