Batteries: Interstate vs Duracell/Deka

I have always gotten more than my moneys worth from any Deka battery I have owned.

If these new Interstates are truly Trojans, I'm sure they are good. If they are just a Trojan look alike, who knows?

Yo!
Yhe same sorta folks who drive a rig all the way across a city to save twenty cents a gallon on fuel. Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of corporate dividend leeches. These days I trust few battery OEMs. A sudden THE NEW COKE makes me suspicious. Trojan may have endorsed acrylic transparent heels and a chrome miniskirt. They still have the industrial market to lean on.

Hearing this chuff I would be using a magnifying glass in the yellow pages looking for DEKA. The brave new world. P & L is the new morality.

Well, take it up with Trojan/interstate/Costco.
Bargain hunters seek cheap. The 84$ costco interstates won over the walmart 27's, and interstate's marketing is effective.

I installed them with their SG at the maximum and with new cable terminations.
Outta my hands now. The owner can't shiv a git about their care and feeding and can easily afford not to.

'load testing' them , and maxing out their specific gravity, only earned a series of bad jokes, on his part.

Cents per kWh rendered. Oooooo BTW money spent fiddling and cost of recharging a battery must be factored in. No free lunches. A sixty dollar battery that costs 460 dollars to give 188 mWh of service cannot hold a candle to a two hundred dollar battery that cost 388 dollars and gives 310 mWh service. Hmmmmm...

BFL13 wrote:
The key is bounce- back whether that means anything AFAIK.

They did bounce back, over 12.8v with about 20Ah removed from the pair after the 19 amp load which dropped voltage to the 12.25 range.

My voltage under load expectations have been distorted since I began working my AGM.

My group 27 90Ah Northstar with 500 + deep cycles, is 10Ah from full, under a 4.4 amp load, and reading 12.82v @ 70.7F.

All sounds pretty much normal to me. Needed a kick start after time on the shelf since built. The voltage sag reported is about right from what I have seen with 6s compared with 12s and AGMs. Perhaps others have seen different results? The key is bounce- back whether that means anything AFAIK.

time2roll just got four of those, but I don't know if he did anything with his before installing them that could be used for comparison with these two batts.

Could be. If the battery/RV owner gave a $hit, so Would I.

He's got new low resistance durable battery connections, rarely boondocks, and easy to warranty 210Ah of thick plate deep cycle battery that cost 168$ before tax.

I don't know why SG did not change with 40Ah added to them, or why it acted funky until after a discharge recharge cycle.

But I noticed my New AGM would not hold the manufacturer full charge resting voltage until cycled and high amp recharged.

I expect new battery pre cycling weirdness. If these batteries were for myself I would have brought my hydrometer into Costco, instead of just my voltmeter. In the end all batteries I tested read 6.34v +/1 0.01v so I just grabbed the two most convenient.

The better question is, are these interstate gc-2s sold by costco, and apparantly made by trojan to their t-605 standard, well, are they built with the same love as they do those they put in a maroon casing with a trojan sticker?

For 84$ each, is that possible?

How much do the 89$ Batteries+ Deka's gc-2's weigh? Are they Deka's nationwide?

If my SG weirdness observations has some deciding against the costco interstate GC-2's, well it is perhaps a forum service.

I wonder how much reading of forums like this that the battery marketers do. Since we all say GC-2s are the best deep cycle bang for the buck in RV service, perhaps they have decided they can offer lighter weight versions of these, and rake in more profit until time proves that something is rotten in Denmark.

Maximum profit makes this world go round. Fisting the consumer is how that is done, and 'they' are getting better and better at it.

Grab your ankles

Mesmells Limburger in the vanilla ice-cream...

Regarding achieving max SG, I found it weird that SG did not change accepting 40AH over 15 hours.

Put it down to new battery weirdness.

They were both 1.275 or above yesterday when I installed them.

I do not have a carbon pile load tester. Was not going to move an inverter to put 800 watts of load on them. Did put 19 amps of air compressor on them. Voltage held was 12.26. Not impressive as my 500+ deep cycle Single 90AH AGM will still retain more voltage then this under this same load.

They weighed in at exactly 58 Lbs each, same as the trojan t-605.
The t-105 weighs 62 Lbs, the T-105RE weighs 67.

The battery owner is a battery murderer as he simply does not care to know what a battery wants to remain happy. These GC-2s were 16$ or more cheaper each than the wally world 27's, and easily fit in the tray.

All battery connections got all new tinned Ancor ring terminals hydraulically crimped on. The factory crimps were in horrid condition with open ended corrosion. One 2awg 'parallel' cable I used as a series cable for the 19 amp air compressor test, was 20 degrees hotter at the crimp than the rest of the cable, which was 5 degrees hotter than the battery lid.

Wonder what the Batteries+ Deka 89$ GC-2s weigh. These would have required a longer drive and cost 6$ more than the Costco interstates gc-2s.

MrWizard wrote:

filrupmark wrote:
We have the Deka gel batteries. They have been great.

GEL ? maybe possible but unlikely

do you mean AGM ?

Yes you are correct AGM's . I forgot but we are running The DEKA's in our truck also. Three years and no problem.