Marine Batteries

Have a look here

http://www.windsun.com/Batteries/Battery_FAQ.htm

Jim.

Manufacturers often have "Marine" and Vehicle eqivalents as "Extra HD" or "Severe service". Marine types often have much shorter or no warranty so watch this when buying.
Look at an Optima, www.optimabatteries.com.au, expensive but very good. Smaller size larger punch. Yellow tops work fine as starting type too and share benefits of marine or Deepcycle types.

JR

Hey Mondo , marine batteries are a good choice as they have a high vibration resistance high cranking amps and deep cycle capabilities , any of the major brand s such as ac delco offer a 2 year warranty , be careful with the oddysey batteries as have seen people have problems with the vehicle not being able to charge them as they require 16 volts input and a normal alternater only puts out 13.8
Regards
Fatboy

Hi, I have started using Exide orbital batteries, the first one is 12 months old,and is in my work hilux, i have run a second one in the caravan and I have just put that
one in the cruiser. the cruiser now has dual batteries controlled by a rotronics system. The batteries have been excellant and crank as well as brandnew. i hope to get 5+ years out of them. Marine are an expensive form of car batterywith more solid construction. Their service life won't be that different to it's equivalent car battery. All batteries must be "cared" for ie used, exercised, recharged depending on their characteristics, eg a new car battery used a couple of times and then left to sit in the caravan for six months probably will fail when it is used again.
anyway check out rotronics and orbital.

Graham

Be warned and be careful.
Some batteries marked as marine only have bolt down terminals as the difference, Optima i can assure you have different specs from their deep cycle/cranking yellow tops to their blue top marine batteries.

Ray,
do it once and do it right.........

I assume you will be using it to power your accessories (fridge etc) if so, get the largest "reserve capacity" battery available in a Quality Deep Cycle battery.
The higher (bigger) the reserve capacity number the longer the time period power is available to your accessories.

As stated in various 'battery' links 'marine' batteries are generally manufactured as cranking batteries, hence their power ratings are expressed as CCA, not as Amp Hours with a reserve capacity rating.