Vehicle Batteries

[Gary Merrifield]

What do you feel like the best replacement is for the house and engine batteries?

[Lee Welbanks]

Gary,
My 06 PT came with Lifeline AGM batteries, the chassis are 4 GPL1400's  and the house are 4, 4DL's. The house batteries are still the originals and still test ok. I replaced the chassis one last year. I bought from Advanced Power Products which is Lifeline, free shipping, Absolutely no maintenance!

[Steve Huber Co-Admin]

Gary,
AGMs are great batteries, but pricy. I've never been able to make the economics work, assuming you get about 7 years out of std lead / acid batteries. Costco gets about $100 for Interstate house batteries and CAT offers a chassis battery with very good specs for a reasonable price. They had 1000 ccas and were about $150 each. Trojan house batteries are also very good. Just be sure you check the water level monthly.
Steve

[Keith Moffett]

Gary
Allow me to add that you should be sure to take several pictures of the wires especialy and accessory wires attached to the batteries.  Many floks here found out that it is easy to get them turned around and short the VIP or something worse.
Use only distilled water.

[Mike Shumack]

RV Geeks did a nice video on comparing the different types of batteries and concluded the Lithium batteries where the best value (but the up-front cost is way too high for me, and it would require a new Inverter/Charger too).

The next best choice, in their opinion, was the AGM. They cost twice as much up-front as wet cell batteries but last twice as long. So it's almost a wash.
I plan to go to the AGM the next time I need batteries - mainly because they are maintenance free (no water to add, and no gassing) and since my current Inverter/Charger (Xantrex) will work with AGM.

This is a screen shot from their presentation.

[Bill Sprague]

Flooded batteries can be a pain to maintain.  There are too many caps and our Beaver made it impossible to see the levels in the back.  The AGMs have great appeal because you don't have to do any of that. 

A battery service bottle for flooded batteries makes it easy enough that monthly checks don't get put off.  Fighting corrosion adds to the work.  I didn't believe Marty when he told me to spray them off with a garden hose frequently.  I tried it.  Corrosion stopped.  The battery tray worked better.  The cable ends stayed clean.   When we sold it with 5 year old batteries the compartment was in great shape.  Don't do it over concrete because it might stain.   

More money than a bottle is a Flow-Rite kit.  When we downsized to a PleasureWay I had to have it.  It makes the flooded batteries almost as easy as AGMs.  It replaces the caps with valves connected with tubing.  You pump in water with a squeeze bulb.  Somehow, the valve caps don't seem to breath the acid vapors and corrosion minimizes.   

[David T. Richelderfer]

I use a 1-gallon garden spray bottle to fill my batteries.  Set the spray end to make a stream, not spray, and don't overpressurize the bottle.  Of course, I do have to bend over to remove and replace the battery caps, but with the spray bottle's hose and wand I can fill the cells without much bending... maybe a little bending so my old eyes can see the distilled water level better, but not such that my back hurts.

I also use the spray bottle to put distilled water into the AquaHot's expansion tank from time-to-time and put distilled water into the batteries of our other cars and pickup.