"Wayne.B" wrote in message
...
On 11 Mar 2007 16:31:08 -0700, "Chuck Gould"
wrote:

If you get five years from a bargain basement battery you're doing
really well.

Depends how you use it. In this particular case it is a starting
battery for my generators and also powers the anchor windlass. I'll
be very disappointed if it doesn't go at least 5 years in light duty
service like that, assuming I keep the cells watered properly.

Rolls pencils out if you figure the more typical three years from a
generic battery. If you pay somebody to replace the battery for you,
or if you value the
time involved or put any value on avoiding the risk of physical injury
associated with "horsing" 150 pounds in what always turns out to be an
incorrect posture, the Rolls puts you money ahead. The warranty on
Rolls is 10 years, (vs 24-36 months for most Brand X), and life
expectancy is often several years beyond the end of the warranty.

The other spiffy thing about the Rolls is that when most batteries
fail it's a failure in a single cell. With most batteries, you have to
junk all six cells bcause one has gone bad. With a Rolls, you simply
test the cells until you find the bad one, unbolt the bad cell from
the network, buy one new cell instead of six new cells, and forge
ahead.

All true, Rolls are great batteries, certainly among the best.

Brand-X from NAPA has one more advantage however - the NAPA store is
10 minutes from my house and the closest Rolls dealers are 2 1/2 hours
away in Lauderdale or Miami.


How close is NAPA to that nice remote anchorage where the cheapy battery
fails? ;-)