Lights, need a new alternator?

A guy from the 2nd gen. taco forum told me to post this here, b/c he said lights are like sound systems.

So at the moment i have the 4 regular lights(high/low, fog) and have 2 100 Watt off road lights, and 2 100 watt back up lights.

Im planning on adding 2 100 watt bed lights, 2 100 watt spot lights, and maybe 4 rock lights..

I have a duralast gold battery, Am i going to need to upgrade my alternator?

Thanks in advance
-Chris

 

Plus your amp and stereo

 

yes plus my amp and stereo!

 

o sorry im new to this forum. Ill do that in the future.
what if i run 10 at the same time?

 

yeah guess ill have to, what about having led bed and rock lights?
cause LED's pull way less watts right?

 

The right way to do this is to calculate how many amps of power draw you plan to add, then test the max alternator output and see how much reserve you have. You'll probably need to have this tested at a shop.

I see that you're local to me, are you by any chance attending Cuesta College? If so, and you're not taking auto classes already, go talk to one of the instructors out there and see if you can get your alternator max output tested and test how much draw you have with everything turned on. Then you know what you need to upgrade.

A decent battery will handle occasional short periods of time with excessive amp draw, but will eventually weaken the battery if you have an undersized alternator. Stereo makes it worse.

It's been my experience that most stock vehicles can handle a pair of 100 watt lights on in addition to the stock electrical loads. Turn them all on at once and you have problems. Blast the stereo while driving on a trail slowly with four rock lights on and the engine at low rpm (low alternator output) and you have a problem.

 

no im attending UCSB next fall.
And what about having 4 led lights, 2 Led bed lights, 2 spot lights, and 2 off road lights, and 2 reverse lights,
So at most there will be 4 led lights, high beams and fog lights, and off road lights. Think that would be to much draw?

 

I personally wouldn't worry about having one pair of extra lights on for an extended period of time, and the others for short periods of time periodically.

In the past I have run a pair of 100W lights, plus factory lights, for a few hours, while intermittently using my auxillary back up lights, no problems.

It's not like the truck is going to fry instantaneously. (assuming your wiring is all good) The first symptom will be that the truck turns over slow when trying to start after running too many lights, stereo, etc for any significant period of time.

What are the led lights you are talking about? Are we talking about a couple of small light strips? Or are we talking about full sized LED based driving lights?

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/WHITE-Car-D...Submodel:Off-Road&vxp=mtr&hash=item1e68c96de4

just some cheap led lights nothing to bulky.
4 of those

 

i myself would just try it out first, if the battery is losing charge while the truck is running (use an amp meter), then upgrade your alternator or maybe try a smaller pulley on it

 

Ok will do. Thanks