Golf cart batterys

As a motorhomer, it's worth mentioning that these batteries like to see some major juice in bulk charge. We have 4 GC2's. Our Magnum inverter provides 100 amps of bulk charge. The battery bank would take more.

Absorb charge takes forever, and is a tremendous waste. (on generator) I wish we had solar to handle the absorb phase. Someday.

Still, we can bulk charge 4 GCs's in 2 hours and burn 1 gallon of diesel doing it.

Wishful Thinking Dept :)

A 4 HP Honda Engine
A 70 ampere rated newer alternator such as an ND (Denso) from a Toyota
Belt driven with an idler pulley to maximize belt wrap

In a booondock situation a Honda would give commendable fuel to kWh efficiency. The four phase Denso alternators are small and relatively lightweight. The spring loaded idler pulley keeps optimum belt tension.

The alternator would be sucking air almost 175 degrees cooler than underhood air so cooling for continuous max charging would not be an issue.

Northertool.com is a good place to find a Honda consumer engine.

It's nice to daydream...

3 tons wrote:
I have two 6v GC's and are long lasting with plenty of reserve...One thing that has yet to be mentioned is that when you connect two 6v's 'in series' (to now produce one large 12v battery), understand that when the voltage doubles (now to 12v) the total amp/hr capacity is thereby cut in half, thus two 220 amp/hr batts 'in series' = 220 amp/hrs total at 12v, not 440.

3 tons

I hate to jump ahead when reading a thread, but this is FALSE.
1 6volt GC2 = 6 volts @ 220 ampere hours.
2 6 volt GC2's, in series, = 12 volts at 220 ampere hours

Short answer there is no need to upgrade your converter/charger, but you will find it helpful when boondocking. I found with the OEM WFCO unit I didn't have enough allowable generator hours at most CGs to fully charge the batteries after a night of TV, etc, especially if furnace usage was involved. The WFCO would charge the batteries just fine if given enough time, but I was seeing that I could never get back to 100% in only a few hours of gen time each day.

First thing I did was upgrade the wire gauge between the charger and the batteries, I have about a 25' run the way the TT is laid out. They used the frame as the neg path, so I added a #4 in parallel to the existing #6 positive wire, effectively giving me a #2 wire there and back. I saw some improvement but the WFCO still wouldn't go into boost mode. Step 2 was to swap out the WFCO for a Progressive Dynamics unit and saw a measurable increase in charge rate.

The other option is to add solar so that you can trickle charge all day and not rely on a few hours of gen time to get the charging job done.

Since you boondock 98% of the time, you will likely want to do one or both to improving the charging efficiency of the system.

I got some great advice from some of the knowledgeable posters here (many have already responded on this thread).

By the way.. I do agree with Mexico that most Smart Chargers taper off too soon.

But it is way easier than manually monitoring to know when to shut 'em down.

And for Full Mosey....

On my AGM comments are based on both research AND personal experience. I was most impressed with the poor life of my AGM's.

Most of the "Benefits" I have heard claimed for AGM's. apply to one and only one brand (Lifeline) and are not recommended for other brands (I had MK/Deka).

I just installed 2 6v 232ah Interstates and awaiting a 4 stage powermax boondocker to replace the wfco that shorted out. I have friends with the 6's and they have a much longer run time than I do. We always drycamp for 2-5 days at a time. The 6v's will be an upgrade.

Stay away from a battery with DP in its name/model like HD24-DP
A 24DC will weigh more with at least 10% or more capacity.

A good group 31 would be almost be double the capacity.

Having run group 24s like I thing the OP runs,I'm not surprised that it is failing after 2 years. Their capacity was about 80 AH each. I had 4 in the PD (320 AH) and thought I was looking after them well but in retrospect they likely were under charged (not dead, just seldom above 90% for long periods) and I gave up on them after 4 years. I had and have solar charging too that I though was keeping up but probably really wasn't.

I replaced them with 4 GCs, giving me 484 AH. the difference was very noticeable.

Electricity is expensive here in southern Mexico so I charge with solar as much as possible though I do have 120V (more or less, sometimes) but am shaded for much of the day. When it gets to the point that solar won't get the batteries up to 14.4 volts (after about 4or 5 days) I engage the Xantrex Prosine 2.0 inverter/charger according to the manufacturer's recommendation at the 20 hr rate of 96 Amps. 45A should do you fine as long as the charging algorithm is reasonable. (Check with MW on that :B )

The Palomino B-800 is a camper, on a short bed pickup, think Dodge mid size. Battery storage space may be at a premium for the OP. If a Group 27 or group 29 fits, that might be all he has space for. A GC-2 battery is pretty tall. OP needs to check dimensions. A 100 to 160 amp panel might be all they need. 5.5 to 9 amps /hr recharge rate.

Need more details from the OP. Need to measure the amps they draw in a 24 hour period. From the spread sheet.

Redsky wrote:
It may be an upgrade if you are replacing one 80 AH 12v battery with two 110 AH 6v batteries, thus giving you 110 amp hours to draw on at 12 volts. If one fails you get less than 12 volts and some electronics equipment will not function at all.

Using 6v batteries is more practical when you have four 6v batteries wired in pairs for 12v output.

Actually, two generic 6V GCs are 220AH which shows how lopsided that comparison is. Honestly, 53lbs compared to 130lbs! Sure, it is a fact, but a useless and misleading fact. When you introduce two grp-31 dual purpose 12Vs, then the comparison gets interesting.

HTH;
John