Battery life
I have a Class C rig with 6 X U2200 6V interstate batteries, they are about 5 years old, well taken care of, toped off regularly. This spring cleaned the corrosion off the terminals and did a regul...
Forum Discussion
Yes, you have your classic "learner set" of batteries right there :(
they will show good voltage and do fine while camping because you don't really need that much of a battery bank, so nothing bad happens as far as you can tell while camping.
But you never got them fully charged and they gradually sulfated and lost capacity and that does show when using an hydrometer.
Actually five years is pretty good doing things that way. You can go longer if you really only need two batts and you have four at half speed.
For your next set of four 6s, do it like it says here in the US Battery blurb. The trouble is , you need a special charger for that, to get over 15v. A VEC 1093DBD will do it on auto Equalize, or any cheap manual (not "automatic") 10a charger will too, except with those you have to stick around and monitor the action for maybe eight hours.
http://www.wholesalesolar.com/pdf.folder/battery-folder/charging_instruction_2011_2.pdf
they will show good voltage and do fine while camping because you don't really need that much of a battery bank, so nothing bad happens as far as you can tell while camping.
But you never got them fully charged and they gradually sulfated and lost capacity and that does show when using an hydrometer.
Actually five years is pretty good doing things that way. You can go longer if you really only need two batts and you have four at half speed.
For your next set of four 6s, do it like it says here in the US Battery blurb. The trouble is , you need a special charger for that, to get over 15v. A VEC 1093DBD will do it on auto Equalize, or any cheap manual (not "automatic") 10a charger will too, except with those you have to stick around and monitor the action for maybe eight hours.
http://www.wholesalesolar.com/pdf.folder/battery-folder/charging_instruction_2011_2.pdf
