12v to 6v review?
Currently have 2-12v 7ear old batteries that appear to be getting weak. Am thinking of replacing with 2-6v GC batteries (or maybe 4). Anyone have experience or real world review of moving to t...
Forum Discussion
stevenal wrote:
Real world here: When running a single 12, twice we had sudden battery failures while traveling.Each time required an out of the way trip to a town to find a replacement. Not how I wanted to spend precious vacation time. The new camper has a pair of 12s. No failures yet, but when it occurs I’ll disconnect the bad one and deal with a replacement later. Do you suppose NAPA (or anyone) in Joseph, OR has a suitable 6 in stock?
Batteries rarely "just quit", degrade, sure, but just quit not so much.
Most battery sudden failures are more from ignoring the maintenance things like checking and adding water. More dead batteries are caused by ignoring the water level and using the batteries through normal charging cycles will eventually boil off enough water tot dry out the battery..
Parallel operation however while it makes you "feel good" in reality will ultimately hide a weak battery and the weaker battery will end up zapping the life of the other battery and eventually you will end up in the exact same boat you found yourself in.
Paralleling sounds great on paper, but in real life, not one battery ever made is 100% perfect and the same as the next on off the line even in the same day batch. They all have different characteristics from charging current, to discharging current. In reality each 12V battery will charge or discharge at slightly different amounts/rates.
It is for that reason auto manufactures like Ford highly recommend on their Diesel trucks which have two starting batteries that when you replace the batteries you should replace both at the same time. Those batteries are connected in parallel but yet a weak battery can cause issues.
