what battery to buy

[pro093]

need to buy a battery for my 80 cruiser has dual battery's
but second one dead, i have a waceo cf110 frige freezer
that it will have to run, normally go away fotr 3 or 4 days
and run some lights now and then .
what do you think i should get theres plenty of them out there
to chose from

[Bruceh]

Go to Springers at Lawnton and checkout the fullriver range. I use a 120amp one and have done for over 2 years. I have a 60lt Waeco and get an easy 4 days without recharge. They take less than 1 hour to recharge unlike a deep cycle battery and you can use them sideways upside down etc. Hope this helps. THey really are a good battery. JMO

[Gwagensteve]

Optima, no question.

Steve.

[LuxyBoy]

CAT.........as in the heavy machinery company.
You can pick them up over near ARB/TJM Coopers Plains
Good price and built for all day, everyday offroad conditions

[Slunnie]

Optima, no question.

Steve.

Power to weight and for charging speed the Optima is excellent, but I'm not convinced they are the best for a 2nd battery.

I tend to think that you want a battery with the largest capacity that you can get so that the 2nd battery is discharged as a % as little as possible. Even though Deep cycles are designed to do this, the % discharge still relates to the life of the battery. The Optima batteries for a given size have a poor capacity when compared to other deepcycles life the FullRiver, Lifeline etc.

Due to this I run the Big Optima blue as a starter and Lifeline 2nd, which is similar to the optima, except it has plates and not the the space consuming spiral cells.

[DamTriton]

Odyssey batteries for another midway option.

Decent AGM batteries with good warranty and service life. Can take a thrashing electrically too. Get youself a big output alternator (160 amp) and you can fully recharge in about 1.5-2 hours with the biggest battery they have, less time for the smaller batteries (no charging current limitations at all).

Having seen someone drop a Siddy spanner across the terminals, and seen the molten metal that resulted (blew it like a 5 cent fuse), then have the battery continue into service like nothing had happened was enough to convince me.

Awesome.

[Gwagensteve]

I like the idea of odyssey batteries, but I'm not convinced they're as durable as some of the other options.

We've used FullRiver on equipment at work and they were junk compared to sonnenshein.

You raise a good point though Slunnie, Optimas do have lower Ah ratings per size. With the run I've had out of my optimas over the last 10 years though, I don't think I could buy anything else.

Steve.

[-Scott-]

We've used FullRiver on equipment at work and they were junk compared to sonnenshein.

Out of curiosity, what sort of application? "Junk" in what respect? Less than stated capacity? Low number of discharge/recharge cycles? Dropping cells?

I have a FullRiver under my bonnet, curious about what sort of impending failure I should watch for...

[nastytroll]

I had 2 odyssey 800's in a 24v mq, they wre only used for cranking and I think they lasted around 8 months. I will not buy odyssey agian.

Check the post 15 second rating on the odyssy and they are not real flash.

[Gwagensteve]

Low number of cycles. They're in a motor drive application. 19 AH or so ones (I'm not looking at them) discharged to about 10V in about 4 hours. Similar application to a golf buggy which is what the battery type we're using is commonly used in.

The gear we use them in comes with sonnenshein and someone was sold the fullriver as a replacement. We won't be buying any more.

Steve.

[evanstaniland]

what kind of battery would people recomend for a winch?? i will be putting a dual battery set up in soon as the winch sucks the life out of just one just thinking would 2 Optimas be the go??

Evan

[pro093]

wheres the best place around capalaba to check them out