Taking the advice on this forum, we replaced the dual 12v house batteries on our coach with two 6-volt golf-cart batteries (from Sam's Club no less). I was amazed at how much capacity they had! I was running inverters, lots of incadescent lights, the furnace, vent fans, multiple laptop computers being charged, for several days and I never got them discharged. My old 12-volt deep cycle batteries could never have held up to that type of load.
So, to all those that have been singing the praises of swapping dual 12-volt deep cyclers to the two 6-volt golf-cart batteries.... thanks! And, for those who talked about getting their batteries at Sam's or Costco... thanks to you too! Ya all saved me over $100 on the pair (compared to the Trojan's).
Alfred
2005 Sightseer with Workhorse
Map below shows states where we actually camped.....
Fleetwood figured out many years ago that if they installed a pair of golf cart batteries in each motorhome, they woudl have fewer complaints about bad batteries. My 97 came with them as standard, and I installed new ones 9 years later, giving the old ones to a friend who is still using the 12 year old batteries!
Keep them topped up with distilled water, and don't let them sit discharged, and they should last 10+ years!
Fred.
Money can't buy happiness but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Porsche or Country Coach!
I've read several posts about replacing 2 12-volt house batteries with 2 six volt golf cart batteries being the best deal, but wonder what it would do to replace 3 12-volt batteries with only 2 six volt golf cart batteries. Don't know enough about batteries to know how to read all the power out-put of each and be able to add up which situation would give the longest power delivery. Currently have a 2004 Meridian and the coach batteries seem to need more charging than they used to, so may need replacing sometime in the near future.
Wagonmaster2
This is a little chart I put together when I was changing batteries in my Meridian 34H and looking at size fit vs. cap. for each battery. Sometimes it's difficult to compare them as the specs aren't called out the same way. Some will debate my just referring to the Reserve Cap (RC) of the stack. But at the end of the day that’s all I really care about as it's the theoretical benchmarks on dry camping night loads and they're not far off from my actual loads. This might help in deciding what you do in yours.
I went from 3ea. GP-29 to 4ea. U2200 GC's, essentially adding the equivalent to a 4th GP-29 I also looked into the structural of the battery tray(s), and the top one is rated @ 250lb.
Jeff
Here's the chart (not real pretty but it was kind of a scratch sheet for me):
wagonmaster2 wrote: I've read several posts about replacing 2 12-volt house batteries with 2 six volt golf cart batteries being the best deal, but wonder what it would do to replace 3 12-volt batteries with only 2 six volt golf cart batteries. Don't know enough about batteries to know how to read all the power out-put of each and be able to add up which situation would give the longest power delivery. Currently have a 2004 Meridian and the coach batteries seem to need more charging than they used to, so may need replacing sometime in the near future.
Wagonmaster2
If you only have space for 2 golf cart batteries, then consider the Trojan T-145. It is only about 1" taller than the T-105, and is a little more expensive. I changed over a electric utility cart from t-105 to T-145 and it really made a differance.
The larger and thicker plates found on the golf cart batteries are not going to droop in voltage when high amperage is called and the thicker plates will endure longer discharge cycles. They also recover from bonehead mistakes, such as when my RV was in a RV repair place for 3 weeks, probably under some sort of cover, and they discharged the batteries most of the way! Not something you want to discover when packing for a 2 week trip!
Golf cart batteries will last 10 years - I don't know anyone reporting their 12 volt batteries lasting that long. If you must use a 12 volt battery, consider the 5SHP by Trojan. It is slightly larger than a group 31, and a lot more reserve minutes, or amp hours. I think it is 165 amp hours, but that is from memory.
The size of the T-105 and 125 are the same, but the capacity goes up, while the T-145 is 1" taller, and all are shown in the chart on the post just above this one, as well as Trojanbattery.com
The majority of the improvement you saw on this swap would have been from old batteries to new ones. But a pair of 6s will have slightly more capacity than 12s in the exact same case size as well as having only half as many cells to fill. There's really no good case to be made for using 12s in a MH or Golf cart.
It is the (reserve capsity) you need so take that into consideration when buying batterys. At Sams Club I would get the higher capsity ones they are only a few dollars more.
Interesting story about Trojan vs Sams/Walmart batteries. I used to drive a tractor trailer for a major battery manufacturer in the southeast. We would take a load of lead bars from our smelter and deliver them to a Trojan plant in Atlanta. We would then bring a load of their batteries without stickers back to our distribution center, where we would put Sams or Walmart, or whatever other retailer's stickers, and deliver them to the store.
We delivered to Walmart, K-mart, Sams, Sears, NAPA, Discount Auto, and numerous other mom and pop retailers. All the batteries came from the same assembly line. In those days, there was only four major manufacturers of about 90% of the batteries sold in the US.
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