What guage for battery cables?

Running dual batteries side by side and the switch next to the batteries. Perko switch wires and battery cable don't exceed 2' each. Will 4 guage wire be ok or do I still need 2 guage. thanks

i would use #2.....think of battery cables like a garden hose. the bigger hose, the more unrestricted flow you can get. it may not seem like a big deal during warm weather.......but if you are a cold weather fisherman, you will appreciate all juice you can get on initial startup.

Agree with crankbait. But wire is sized on resistance and that really matters on long runs and especially when using 12v battery power. However, running the numbers for you based on wire resistance and your short distance using a nice big number for amperes.

Not for batteries in parallel, but to give you an idea of just where you are, if you had one battery connected to an engine requiring 200 amperes starting current what would be the differences in voltage drop over 2' for the two wire sizes.

For #2 it would be 0.064 volts. For #4 it would be 0.1. Your interconnections would offer more voltage drop than that.

So the answer is use what you want. It makes no difference because the run is so short.

Mark