My friend showed me this YouTube video on super capacitors starting engines. What I like is its super light weight compared to a regular battery. There are a few other YouTube videos that were made as well. Worth looking at.

 

Ive heard of this before, my brother was dabbling in making one for his car, not sure why he never proceeded with it. I will drill him about what he knows about it and what his thoughts are.
Seems like a good idea from first glance, I would be concerned about longevity of the unit though... I will report back with some info hopefully soon.

 

http://nz.mouser.com/ProductDetail/M...yf4oouFg%3D%3D

Packaged unit.

Cheers,
Mike

 

Will it allow time travel?

 

aaaannnnddddd back to the pre battery late 1800's

 

Is there a real point? Cool product and all, but if you have a battery that works well.. i dont see a point.

Remember the power has to come from somewhere. so if you had a small battery, it'll all discharge into the caps, then released out all at once. then if it fails to start, you're kind if screwed.

 

OK... so I heard back from my brother, who is going to school for computer engineering, and he gave me some pros and cons about using one of these in place of a battery.

Cons: the capacitors discharge in a few days, so a small solar panel or something to keep it charged up is needed (he recommended a small 12v battery)

Pros: they charge very fast and allow for a huge surges of current on demand, such as starting in cold weather.

Now as far as the charging system goes I'm not sure what affect it would have on the unit, although if there were issues a disconnect could be implemented i would think. Sounds to me like it might work well in a track only car, where weight and space is a must, although there are Odyssey batteries that share that same quality. Until some field testing has been done, which I would think it has been somewhere, it looks like a tossup. I agree with Pauly with having a battery why not use it lol.

 

All capacitors have a leakage, which is kind of like a parasitic drain. Better ones will have less though. The longer you want to be able to leave your car without starting it, the better the caps and the larger battery you will need. If you ran your car every couple days you could easily get by with just caps.

They are much lighter than batteries so are ideal for a race car. They will fully charge in a few seconds, so can be quickly charged from an external battery if needed.

There big advantage in daily use is that hot or cold they will provide more amps to your starter for a nice quick start. They can also provide instantaneous current for the spikes caused by lots of base on your stereo.

I've also seen people sell caps claiming they improve your cars performance, by making sure the cars ignition system can always get all the current it needs. It is the same thing that helps your stereo. The alternator and battery can't provide for an instantaneous change in current demand, but the cap can. It is a sound theory, but I've never seen any real testing of it and I doubt it could come close to being a noticeable performance improvement unless you had other serious electrical problems. But it couldn't hurt either.

 

Here is an advantage I see. A battery will sulfate over a period of a few years because they really need to be trickle charged to 14.8volts not a higher charging amperage at 13.5volts like auto manufacturers have the regulators set at so batteries never see that fully top charge, so it will sulfate over a few years and have to be replaced at over $120 each time. Capacitor don't go bad unless overcharged. So balancer resistors will need to be used between the caps to maintain equal charge. I plan on using this style setup for my 951.

 

The benefit is as simple as this:

Batteries have high storage capacity but low current capability.
Capacitors have low storage capacity but high current capability.

Cars need high current for starting. Cars need high storage capacity for normal day-to-day running.

Sizing a battery for high current gives you more storage than you need.

You can connect a small battery and a capacitor in parallel to get enough storage + high current.

(by "high" and "low" I mean relatively...)

Read the Maxwell data sheets and website - they explain all this.

Cheers,
Mike

 

With all respect to those curious, I feel this is a modification for a purpose built car and has no place in a street car...even if it is driven at an occasional DE.

A standard battery is all you need on a street car.