Thursday, Mar 17, 2005 at 17:00
Spot on advice......
I've been all through that shyte about deep bloody cycle batteries. There may have been one or 2 things said about this in the archives before....not real sure???? hahahaha (please excuse my sarcasm)
As I've said many times (and I've tried deep cycle batteries in my 4x4s over the years)......they are a great battery for they were designed to do.....and that WAS NOT to rund fridges or be used in a 4x4 situation. They were designed to be used in the go-fors that the oldies use to go to church etc and motorised wheel chairs etc. In those conditions they have a steady drain throughout the day (similar to running a fridge, you might say).................BUT......BUT....at night they sit at
home, plugged into their special transformer; and in the morning they're as good as new (almost).
It has been shown that in off road conditions (or even in say a caravan in "on-road" conditions), they simply do not get the required charge they need from the vehicle's alternator.
The only time I would use a deep cycle battery in a travelling situation now would be if it was in a road-going caravan and was going to be able to be charged by a 3 stage charger overnight (say in a caravan park) and at the same time have no load on it . This would be possible if the van fridge, lights etc was all running off the 240 volts during the night and the the charger was able to feed the battery properly over night.
The Exide Extreme (I use 2 under my bonnet) is a very robust battery, quite capable of being used overnight to run accessories and then be charged during the day from the alternator. Even it will benefit from being charged over night from a battery charger, which is why i have one in the back of my GU. Every night in the carport at
home, I plug the 240 cable into the socket on my bullbar. This automatically takes over the running of the Engel fridge (which sits in the back and runs 24/7/365) and also tops up the 2nd battery.
The only other possible idea you might want to consider if you've got oodles of cash, would be a Exide Orbital (I have 2 of these in my camper trailer hooked up in parralel). The downside to this is that most experts you talk to recommend you use batteries of the same type when they are gunna be hooked together. Also, the Orbital is quite small and is only a 50a/h jobbie. The Extreme is a much better bet IMHO and about 1/3rd of the price of the orbital.
Good luck
Roachie
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