Trojan T-125's finally gone

theoldwizard1 wrote:
Very impressive ! What was your maintenance routine/schedule ?

for the 10 years I had them I was prudent but not anal about maintaining them. I have a trimetric monitor and on most outings they would get down to anywhere from 25% to 40% SOC (60-75% DOD). I was running a dorm fridge, cpap and furnace off them in a homebuilt small toyhauler. Then I'd hit them with the generator and a PD45A charger till they got to about 80%SOC, and repeat. Once home I'd let them get to as close to 100% as I could, but the PD will only get to 14.6V less than what trojan wants.

I'd always watch the water level, and once or twice a year I'd hit each battery with my harbor freight charger and get each battery up to around 7.75V or so. After 10 years SG was still at 1.275 on each cell and doing a load test of 220A for 20 seconds per Mex recomendations IIRC, they dropped to about 5.4V underload.

The last 4 years were with our daughters in-laws, and he, not being real electrical minded, didn't pay near as much attention to the batteries. I kept reminding him to watch the water and the WFCO was NOT a good charger. But once or twice a year he would hit them with my BD charger. He also camped with us often, and we do lots of dry camping. not having a trimetric I'd just use my voltmeter to monitor his battery. But often he would get home and be a few weeks before he would charge them up again. I think that last 4 years was about as bad on them as my 10 years.

But in any case we got our money's worth out of them.

I have another set in the small trailer now going on 7 years and they are still doing well, and a set of 4 in my big trailer also going on 7 years and doing well.

But they are also maintained like the original ones. But these newer one are also connected to 320, soon to be 500W of solar solar, so they seldom get below 50% SOC on outings,