Two of the most powerful fundamentals based on building a race car or serious hot rod are creating more horsepower and/or reducing weight. If quicker elapsed times or serious street-cred are your priority, you should take advantage of any available weight-saving opportunity — as long as it does not sacrifice performance or reliability.

By replacing a heavy 40-pound battery (or two) and installing the Performance Distributors’ 13.5-pound dry-cell battery, it’s just like adding horsepower. Known as the Dyna-Batt, it produces the cranking power of a quality wet-cell battery.

“The Dyna-Batt does not have a cold-cranking amp rating like other wet cell batteries,” explains Performance Distributors’ own Brian Caruth. “The Dyna-Batt performance battery is a completely dry-cell design that can withstand the rigors of extreme use in a racing environment. This battery has been tested to crank engines with compression ratios as high as 15:1, with a reserve capacity of 16 amp-hours.”

Caruth adds, “Dry cell batteries will charge quicker than their wet cell counterparts. Working well with a standard 12-volt alternator charging system, they also work great in street rods, muscle cars, and off-road vehicles.”

The days of racers using their battery to solely provide electrical power to a racecar’s electrical system are long gone. The demands of such hardware as high-energy ignitions, shift solenoids, and electronic fuel injection has racers today using an alternator/charging system. The Dyna-Batt carries an extremely low internal resistance that provides a faster, more consistent power supply.

With its small 7 x 3 x 6.5-inch size, you can tuck the Dyna-Batt into the tightest confines. With no opportunity to leak, you can mount the battery flat, on its side, or even upside down if desired. To illustrate the batteries’ sealed advantages, the Dyna-Batt is not considered a hazardous material/package. Customers can have Performance Distributors ship these batteries via regular parcel shipping without additional handling fees.

The dry-cell battery has an excellent storage life and recharges very quickly using any 12-volt charger. Performance Distributors also offer a low-amperage battery charger/maintainer that it recommends for avoiding an overcharge of the battery. An additional safety factor built into this sealed battery is its resistance to an acid leak in the event of an accident where the battery case may be damaged.

It is very interesting in this age to witness improved technology such as the Dyna-Batt that performs like a traditionally larger and heavier unit yet defies the physics of that typical lead-acid battery. Considering that in today’s world the telephone you carry in your pocket has more computing power than the computing system that guided men in a rocket to the moon years ago, big power in a small package is more easily realized.