Mine started at -4 with just the grids and a single 850cca battery a couple times last winter. Lit right off and wasn't that rough either. But that's also when I decided to go out and get a bigger battery. If it needed to crank more than a couple times it wouldn't of made it. It really takes some amps to turn that thing over when the temp gets down there.

 

What is the reccomended battery for good cold starts. I have a feeling I am going to need a new one before it gets real cold.

 

I believe 1100cca is the minimum recommended by Dodge.

 

An ice-cold battery is lucky to have half it's normal zip on a frosty morning.

I have three big old group 31s on my personal truck, so cold starts are no problem.

I have a 1.5 amp on-board trickle charger that I am installing on the wife's single-battery truck.

I will plug it in on those cold nights so she can get gone before daylight, without me having to go outside.

 

If we had to plug these trucks in at 32* around here you couldn't afford the power bill. There might in a good year be 60 frost free days. I have never had to plug any of the Dodges I have at work in above -20* unless they have sat for several days W/O being started. Some of my gassers don't fare that well.

 

I certainly agree that 35* or even 32 is not necessary at all but they do run a little better when first started if a little warm. I put the heater on a timer. I normaly start the power about 2 or 3 hours before I need to start the truck.

 

I do mine like thumbs does and ten minutes after starting the cab is warm and the windows clear plus easy on the engine for 10 cents a day.
Ryan

 

I agree that these engines will start in temperatures below zero and I could probably also survive a night outside in the ice cold rain, but I would be much better off warm and dry.

When a COLD engine is cranking, all the little seals are almost frozen to their shafts, brittle and stiff as a walking-stick; it would be possible for a little chunk to be torn from a seal's lip, thus starting a leak.

Maybe the first little tear doesn't leak; but the next time, that little tear gets bigger, then bigger again.

Electricity is not cheap, but it is easier to pay an electric-bill, than to re-seal an engine.



I hear these engines cranking in the cold, oil stiff as molasses, starter arcing and dragging, cable-ends smoking; that can't be good for anything.

Plugged in for a couple hours, they will whirl over like mid-July, and the coolant will almost make heat.

 

Rotella 5w/40 T-Syn pretty much solves the oil cold flow problem. I think 15w/40 would have stopped me just as quick as the 850cca battery might have done last winter.