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On my Ariens A19A42 lawn tractor that has I think its an 18.5 hp Briggs and was wondering if I could use a regular sized 12v car battery instead of the regular battery's that seem to always go bad? Was thinking of making a mount off the front for ballast then run 4 awg battery cable to the starter and ground.

Will the hogher powerful battery mess up the starter or anything else?

Or maybe you guys know of a good battery that I can buy instead of the one from Wal-Mart that I buy which is that Johnson Controls makes ? i Think they are called the Ever Start battery. Have good luck with their car batteries but not lawn mower battery's. I have a solar battery maintainer I place on top of my lawn mower shed to help keep the battery up but whenever I have a 2-3 months here is Wa. State where lawns don't need mowed it's never very strong anymore and this one now has a dead cell and is only 1 year old.

The bigger battery won't have any effect on the starter if everything is working correctly, meaning not hard to turn over due to out of adjustment valves, or extended crank times. Starter will only draw what it will draw amp wise. Charging system may have a slightly larger load due to charging the larger battery, but if everything else is working correctly will be a non issue.

And Walmart batteries are having issues. I have seen more than one mower battery at Walmart the last couple of years that were close to a year old. And that style of wet charge, wet ship is supposed to be put into use within 6 months of manufacture.

ILENGINE said:

The bigger battery won't have any effect on the starter if everything is working correctly, meaning not hard to turn over due to out of adjustment valves, or extended crank times. Starter will only draw what it will draw amp wise. Charging system may have a slightly larger load due to charging the larger battery, but if everything else is working correctly will be a non issue.

And Walmart batteries are having issues. I have seen more than one mower battery at Walmart the last couple of years that were close to a year old. And that style of wet charge, wet ship is supposed to be put into use within 6 months of manufacture.

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OK Thank you - what is the best brand batteries being made for lawn tractors with my 18.5 hp Briggs then?

There is really only 2-3 companies that make batteries for the most part and then are marketed through several brand names. The main issue is just finding a fresh battery. The batteries that you have to add the acid yourself are normally the best but are hard to find. The sears diehard fell into the category at least years ago. Last couple of years I have been using the Menards batteries. 6 month warranty which is better than most as far as lawn mower batteries. My local Menards will get a couple pallets of batteries in the spring and normally by mid summer they are gone. As compared to going to Walmart and the ship date is July 20 and it is now April 21

An issue you can run into using a car battery is if the battery is low on charge and you jump it off to start the mower it will put a high current draw on the stator for a long period to charge the battery and can overheat and damage the stator.