Battery amp/hour ratings

[Gene_Ginny]

--rant on--
My battery is getting weak and not holding a charge as long as it should so I have been doing online searches. It seems nobody wants to show amp/hour ratings online for deep cycle batteries. 😞 Today I went to Walmart to actually see what was printed on the battery(s) they had. One had what, at first, seemed to be a great rating. It was 122 A/H ...... but in the small print, @1 amp draw !!!!! The standard is to show A/H at 20 amps draw. Seems like Wally World is trying to pull a fast one.
---rant off---

Oh yes, I found on another forum that my 8 year old 108 A/H battery was actually at the 10 amp rate so it was really closer to a 70 A/H battery @20 amps.

[pnichols]

wa8yxm wrote:
The Exception: OPTIMA batteries are 60% of the above (Other 40% is wasted space that is air).

Optima did for a short while sell an exception to themselves and I have one:

It's a Yellow Top Group 31 size, rated at 95 amp hours, that I've never weighed - but it's a back-buster to lift. They soon took it off the commercial market because the U.S. military contracted to buy their entire output of it.

This Optima easily weighs more than the new 72 lb. Group 31 Fullriver's I recently bought. It's a mystery to me how this Optima can weigh so much with it's cylindrical cells being the only place containing it's lead. :h

[MEXICOWANDERER]

A 4-D is SNOT a cyclable battery. A plates per cell count will scream FOUL!

A 4-D will have most likely an 1100-1200 CCA rating. A GC-220 Will have less than half that.

Yet the 4-D will have more ampere hours at the 20-hour rate.

Direct BCI / BCI group size comparisons are useful. The heavier the weight COUPLED WITH the fewer the ampere hours is the hallmark of separating deep cycle batteries from the pretenders.

A group 27 battery made to golf car specs by ABC Battery in L.A. had roughly 55-amp hours and was SEVEN POUNDS HEAVIER than a Sears RV battery. Acid starvation did that project in.

[wa8yxm]

Gene&Ginny wrote:
The lable on the Wally World battery did say "122 AH @1 amp", that really threw me.

I will make it easy for you.

It does not matter (with one exception) who made the battery

A Group 24 is about 75 amp hours
A group 27 around 95
A group 29 around 105
A group 31 around 130

All are plus/minus 10%

The Exception: OPTIMA batteries are 60% of the above (Other 40% is wasted space that is air).

GC-2 (golf car SiX volt can be

210,215,220,230 =,240 or 250 with 220 and 230 being most common.

YOU need to talk to the store about those.

Anothr way is to weight the puppies.. Pounds per watt-hour (12 times amp hours) is right close to a constant.

A 100 pound battery has twice the capacity of a 50 pounder

This is why thy use GC-2 instead of 4D

Each GC-2 weighs nearly exactly half the 4d and since you use two of them in series to get 12 volt.. You get a 4D. Way easier to wrangle
(Cheaper too).

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Would not like to meet the mutha that could hand crank a 472 cubic inch Cadillac engine. I learned patience when motoring long distances on very hot days. The starter cpuld have used an extensive heat shield between it and the exhaust but laziness won out.

[pnichols]

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Would not crank because of classic GM starter motor heat-soak.

There used to be a superior solution to that other than putting better starters in automobiles.

My MG had it decades ago .... a hand crank hole low in the front with the crank for it stowed clamped in neat brackets in it's tiny trunk.

That's the 800 pound problem Gorilla in the reliability room today ... there's not enough back-up solutions provided ... in products or anywhere else.

I used to work in integrated circuit manufacturing. If folks only knew what one leaky junction buried deep in a solid state circuit could do to mess up their modern "high tech" lives ...

[MEXICOWANDERER]

I visited a friend in the bayarrhia. His business neighbor was an auto shop. One day the owner came to me and said "I hear you are a troubleshooter". A poor customer had paid over 500-dollars for various parts to stop the A/C from cutting out when the gas pedal was depressed. The idiot had several junk cars parked out back. I spent 3-minutes locating a heater control inline vacuum non return fitting. Problem went away.

Decades before I was southbound on I-5 with my Caddie. Shut it off in a gas station. Would not crank because of classic GM starter motor heat-soak. Pimple-faced kid runs out with his cheese grater load tester. "It's your alternator" he pronounces...

"Sonny, wanna know what I do for a living?"

He vanishes. I get into the car and drive off.

It's no joke. The aptitude or honesty in the repair trade is a disgrace.

[Gene_Ginny]

I looked up the Trojan batteries mentioned and they actually list the specs. They list AH for 5, 10, 20, and 100 hour rates. If they are so honest with their ratings they may just be as honest with the way they build them. Refreshing. 🙂 :C

[Oldme]

Who makes them....

[pnichols]

Mex wrote:
ARE YOU SUGGESTING?

"What are these Interstate Batteries doing here in place of my pair of brand-new Lifelines?"

"Oh, we did you a favor and tested them and found them to be bad. Two hundred ninety dollaes please"

Yep ... except with these small tweaks:

"What are these Wally World batteries doing here in place of my pair of brand-new Fullrivers?"

"Oh, we did you a favor and tested them and found them to be bad. Two hundred ninety dollars, each, please".

[MEXICOWANDERER]

ARE YOU SUGGESTING?

"What are these Interstate Batteries doing here in place of my pair of brand-new Lifelines?"

"Oh, we did you a favor and tested them and found them to be bad. Two hundred ninety dollaes please"

[pnichols]

FWIW, you also have to be careful with what "others" can do to your RV batteries after you purchase them.

For instance, yesterday I dropped our RV off for repairs that could take up to a week. Just in case, before taking it in I removed the two brand new AGM batteries I'd installed a week ago. I didn't want any personnel mess ups or misuse at the repair facility (leaving a roof fan on by mistake 24/7, using their 12 V computer in it during lunch hours, etc.) to deeply discharge the new batteries and for them to discover it and then merely charge them back up before I picked up the RV. Why risk having a deep - or worse yet a complete run-flat - cycle put on those brand new batteries that might permanently shorten their life.

Am I paranoid about workers and workmanhip - you bet.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

By manufacturer and vendor custom, the alpha-numeric stickers are not supposed to be touched-ever. Inventory stocking rotation is indeed reliant on the code but there is zero legitimate reason to alter the reality of the build date. For one vendor I custom built a constant voltage power supply with 9-pairs of charging cables. Battery purchases and inventory rotation is an artform.

[time2roll]

Gene&Ginny wrote:

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
.... Some of the hucksters ate slapping current date code stickers on year-old battieries that have never been recharged. It's a disgrace.
..

Ain't that the truth. I was in Wally World on July 1 and one battery had a sticker 7/15. Wow, built, shipped, delivered and on the shelf by 2pm of the same day. :R

Those bright stickers are inventory control. Have seen batteries with multiple dates. Maybe they got a top charge at best and back on the shelf. Actual build is more likely embossed in the plastic or covered by the label.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

The USA is no longer the country of my youth. It is a black hole of get-rich-quick scams. But I do remember a car dealer service manager telephoning me in 1967.

Did you use some sort of chemical on the speedometer cable of the car you traded in?

Yep. Devcon B. Impossible to remove. Makes turning a speedometer back a real odyssey. The was absolutely nothing wrong with that speedometer when I drove the car to the dealership.

The service manager got testy and hung up without saying Good Bye.