Choosing The Right Battery For Your Snowmobile

Few winter activities are as fun as snowmobiling. When everybody else prefers to nestle indoors because of the cold, those who own a snowmobile see the advent of winter as an opportunity to crank up that old motor sled and enjoy the outdoors in ways they can’t during the other seasons.

Aside from giving you the ability to travel on ice and snow, a snowmobile can also allow you to explore areas that you can only access if you’re on one. As long as you’ve got a full tank of gas, your snowmobile can take you miles and miles away to remote and hard-to-reach places, even when there are no roads that lead to them.

Then again, a fully gassed-up snowmobile won’t be able to take you anywhere if its battery is dead or dying. After all, it’s the battery that gives your snowmobile—or any other vehicle, for that matter—the spark that allows it to start. And if your snowmobile won’t turn on, it’s highly likely that its battery is giving up because you haven’t used it frequently enough to maintain the charge.

While you can always troubleshoot your battery and perhaps make an effort to bring it back to life, you can also opt to shop for snowmobile replacement batteries instead. Here are some tips that can help you choose the right battery for your snowmobile.

Buy an all-weather, maintenance-free battery.

Snowmobiles operate in cold temperatures and are subject to lots of vibration. As it turns out, the cold and vibration are the two things that affect snowmobile batteries the most. A cold battery has less power and becomes more prone to failing to start an engine. Vibrations while the snowmobile’s running, on the other hand, can loosen active plate material and cause it to fall and break inter-cell welds and grids at the bottom of the battery case. Battery life may also become shorter because of the loss of material.

So if you’re going to buy a replacement battery, get one that can provide you robust reliability. An all-weather maintenance-free powersport battery should be at the top of your list. With a premium battery, you’re assured of safe snowmobiling even in the coldest of days and the roughest of trails.

Check for compatibility.

While it’s wise to go for an all-weather maintenance-free powersport battery, you have to make sure first that you choose one that is compatible with your snowmobile. So check the owner’s manual for your motor sled or the specifications of the battery you’re replacing to make sure you’ll be getting the right replacement. More often than not, important specs such as voltages can be found indicated in a sticker on your current battery, so check it out.

Be mindful of battery size.

You should also be careful about the size of the battery because you don’t want to be bringing home a new one only to find out that it’s the wrong fit for the housing on your snowmobile. To be sure that you’re buying the right size, always check the dimensions of your old battery or the size available in your motor sled.

Go for higher CCA.

Would you like your snowmobile to start faster and more easily than before? If so, then go for a snowmobile battery with a higher CCA or Cold Cranking Amps, which is the measure of power that a battery delivers in 30 seconds. To get an idea about the CCA that your snowmobile requires, check the CCA of the battery that you’re about to replace.

A higher CCA isn’t just for more starting power. When considering the CCA of a new battery, you also have to factor in the age of your motor sled as well as the aftermarket accessories such as lighting kits, winches, radios, and engine parts that you have installed.

Older snowmobiles tend to have aging components that require more power. Aftermarket accessories typically use up more battery power as well. So if you’ve had your snowmobile for a long time and you’ve had non-original equipment installed on it, then you would do well to buy a battery with a higher CCA.

Choose one with a high shelf life.

Since it can only be used in winter, a snowmobile—along with its battery—is going to be stored away for months until the cold weather returns. If you want your battery to still work fine when the snowmobile gets used again, buy a battery with a good shelf life. If you purchase one that doesn’t have a good shelf life, then the battery is more likely to suffer corrosion and damage in storage and will be rendered useless by the time winter sets in.

These are just some of the things you have to consider when shopping for a new battery for your snowmobile. With the right battery, you can enjoy riding your snowmobile to the fullest for a long time.

Author bio:

Lauren Fernandez is the Content Marketing Strategist for Renegade Battery, a power sport batteries manufacturer based in Goodyear, Arizona that supplies batteries for motorcycles, ATVs, snowmobiles & jet skis all over the US. When not writing, she makes use of her spare time doing trail runs and reading books.