We have been using golf cart batteries for five years from Walmart. I
believe they are made by Penn and have proven to be very durable. I gotta
believe they are the best bang for the buck on the market.

"Larry" wrote in message
...
Jim wrote in news:Y4drg.4079$ye3.3854
@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net:

Costco has them for $62 each

225 AH, 6V at a 20 hour discharge rate. It's on the sticker on the side.

Being taller, make sure you have the space over them so you can fill them
during maintenance, comfortably. AS the floorspace footprint is much
smaller, if you have the vertical space, you might be able to fit 4 or
even
6 of them into the space the 8Ds came out of. 2 or 3 parallel banks is a
lot of power at amazing amperages when needed, without overheading the
one-
house-battery. One or two marine battery switches to isolate and separate
them, in case you lose one cell, allows you to run the rest until the bad
cell can be replaced....redundant. Just parallel them all on BOTH when
the
charger is on them, distributing its current to slowly charge them all.

$62 is a bargain. Being for rough service in golf carts that may roll
over, mine don't leak a drop if inverted.

Figure out what your maximum current the cabling can stand and put a heavy
battery fuse in between each pair in the jumper. Mine have a 250A fuse
using #2 cables. They crank a 6.2L V-8 diesel easily without that fuse
even getting warm.

If the battery charger didn't boil out the electrolyte overcharging and
had
enough capacity to reach 1.270 specific gravity, why screw around buying
some electronic gadget with more failure modes and unproven reliability.
Old battery chargers charging the same old lead-acid batteries that has
worked for 20 years will do so another 20 years. Is there a downside in
here somewhere??