Somebody @ CarDomain. Fom times to times I check the Sportages listed there...

Notice the extra battery carrier. That's very cool. Where can I get one of those?

That's not extra batery, I guess the right driver sportages comes with the battery on the left side. Gary, can you confirm that?

Correct, that's a right hand drive Sportage.

That's right, we have the battery right above the exhaust manifold. What a wonderful piece of engineering that is, normal battery life 2-3 years in a generally temperate weather area..... <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" />

Either way, I don't have anything over on that side and if I could some how get my hands on one of the brackets for the right-hand drive, I could add another battery (I'm gonna need one with all the lights that're going on it - 3x130W lights on front bumper, 2x55W fog lights, 4x55W lights on custom light bar (on roof), just finished (gotta mount it), 2x55W rear aux. (on safari rack), 2x55 rear aux. (in upcoming custom rear bumper).

You don't need another battery, but you do need an uprated alternator. If you have just the fwd facing lights on(4 x roof 55w + 3 x bullbar 130 w + standard tail lamps + 2 x 65w standard headlamps) + the current needed to run the engine (EFI/Ignition), you will need about 90 amps continuous out of your alternator, we only have a 70 amp alternator at peak revs.... Idle the car (< 2500 rpm) for anymore than 30-40 minutes a night and you wont be able to start it up again. Idle it for more than 1 hour and it will stall due to flat battery. BTW, these figures assume that you ARE staring with fully charges batteries....

Having two batteries will lengthen the time you have until your batteries go flat, but they will still go flat. It is a supply/demand issue and you are trying to tackle the wrong end., The battery is simply a reservoir to capture excess alternator charge, and in your case you don't have any.....

..... plus when you eventualy flat the batteries it will take ages to recharge by the altenator

What Gary and Fokion are saying is very true. The Alternator needs to exceed the load condition but the battery only needs to start the engine and run the lights(or listen to the tunes) with the engine off.

In fact, I ran my Sportage for a couple of months with only a 5AH battery.

But obviusly your consumption is LESS that the alten. production