Time to Replace the Battery - Recommendations?

just go get the biggest interstate battery that will fit the hole. good battery fair price. when not in use put a trickle charger on it, about $5.bucks at harbor frt.

If you dry camp I would buy the deep cycle battery that offers the greatest amount of amp hours. Deep cycle batteries will not have a "cranking amps" number. Good luck with your decision.

It sounds like you like to do some camping off the power grid. Your 23B has its single battery box between the propane tanks and the trailer jack.


If it were me I would move the Propane Tanks as far to the front as I could get them and not interfere with the trailer jack. Then I would mount a couple of battery tray angles across the trailer frames to mount at least two batteries. These will mount on top of the frame and may extent out on both sides.



Adding a metal lockable box is a great idea to keep your batteries safe from thief but not absolutely necessary. TorkLift has a great lockable battery box.



I still use the plastic battery boxes here. I will probably go with a lock box like this one when I upgrade my 2008 GP24 Interstate batteries soon.






We do alot of camping off the power grid off our batteries and I think a minimum battery capacity is around 220AHs. The more the better of course.

The best deals you find is using two golf cart 6VDC deep cycle batteries in series ($70-$80 each from COSTCO) to give you 12VDC. Two of these will give you 220AHs capacity and will allow you to pull 20AMPS of 12VDC CURRENT for around 440 minutes (7 hours time) to drop you down to 0% charge state (10.5VDC). Of course you never want to drop below 50% charge which is somewhere close to 12.0VDC before recharging again otherwise you may start doing damage to your batteries. 20AMPS is a lot of DC current to draw - you probably won't draw more than 200-300WATTS for more than a few hours... We do our highest battery drain between 8PM and 11PM and of course our trailer has a parasitic battery brain of around 1-2 amps all the time. We plan out of power use so that our 255AH capacity battery bank drops down to around 12.0VDC by 8AM the next morning and then recharge our battery bank during breakfast by connecting our trailer shore power cable directly to our 2KW Honda Generator which will use the on-board smart mode converter/charger unit to re-charge our batteries back up to their 90% charge state in a short three hour generator run time. This fits the generator run time restrictions usually found at the camp grounds here on the East side of the US.

Just food for thought...

Roy Ken

Hi,

If you don't wish to make modifications, get the biggest meanest battery that will fit the compartment. Add a modest solar system of 150 watts.

I asked a similar question about a week ago. The thread is here.

LEMII,

it would help if you told us if you do any dry camping or boondocking.
because, if you do, this would be the time to go to two 6v golf cart or 12v deep cycle batteries.

if you don't do either and always have electric hookups, then any 12v deep cycle battery will do.

I've got a 8 year old Interstate that's still going strong and rarely needs fluid. Also have a 5 year old Wal-Mart, still works but it's getting weaker, has needed fluid frequently since it was new. So they both work as they should, the more expensive looks like it will outlast the cheaper and requires less maintenance.

Twin group 27 deep cycles from Costco. I recommend and we use. Good for 3-4 nites of watching TV at night and runnin furnace. After that we pull out the Honda gen set for a quick charge. Dual betteries if you may be off the grid

I've had a gel battery for four years and have had no maintenance. I use a battery cut off switch when not camping but do not dry camp, always have 30 amp service.

We do limited dry camping; we sepnt four nights in Cades Cove last year and would love to do another such trip or two this year. We have a 2000-w Honda generator.

I purchased an Exide Stowaway 27MDCST battery from Tractor Supply ($89.99) this weekend - I had a Deka group 24. I had to buy a bigger box and modify the wires.

Lesson learned:
I made the mistake of not taking a picture of the original wiring and didn't label the wires - so I ended up switching the leads and blew out my inline 30-amp fuse. Part of the problem was that the wire colors are white-negatve and green-positive; not the usual red and black. Why Jayco didn't use the automotive standard, I don't know!

Once I figured out which was which, I put on some new ring terminals and put some red shrink wrap on the positive wire and black shrink on the negative. Hopefuly this will help me or whomever else may need to change the battery in the future.

Thanks for all the input. Hopefull others will be helped by this post.