Walmart Battery Comparison

[Eric212]

Roughly 5 years ago I installed three 12V Marine batteries that I purchased from Walmart. I can fit a maximum of 3 batteries on board, so I decided to go with 3 12V batteries instead of 2 6V batteries. Each was rated at 125 Amp Hours and I was very happy with their performance, especially for the low price.

I got a good 5 years out of them (with some winter use too) and now it is looking like it's time to replace.

Back at Wally World, I see they have 2 different batteries in the category I'm looking for. One of them is priced at $86.83 and is rated at 122 Amp Hours (1Amp @ 12V) Part #29DC

The other is the same basic dimensions, but the case looks slightly different. Priced at $99.97 and rated at 114 Amp Hours (1 amp @ 12V) Part # MAXX-29DC

So I would think that the more expensive "MAXX" ones are "better", but I also like the fact that the other ones have MORE amp hours for LESS money. I suppose the MAXX ones must be a little heavier duty, they are both Marine batteries, not "real" deep cycles. The cheaper ones would be a total of $260.49 for 366 AH, whereas the heavier duty ones would be $299.91 for 342 AH. That's basically an additional $40 for 24 FEWER AH. They are both made by Johnson Controls.

I have a good 4 stage charger which is always maintaining them when the camper is not in use, or when camping near shore power. But most of my camping is away from shore power so I like to have as much battery reserve on board as possible.

Which ones would you buy? I have decided on buying either one of these, so please don't turn this into a sales pitch for Trojans or Lifelines. I do realize they are better, but they are also a lot more expensive. for the purposes of this post I am only comparing the 2 batteries I have referenced.

Thanks for reading!

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Yeah the big game now is the NAFTA pin the tail on the donkey for taxes. But Outerstate does not buy direect from LTH. They use an intermediary broker like GNB, US BATTERY or OXIDE. Mexico has lots of lead and what could be nicer than selling contaminated recycled lead to the Chinese?

LTH is near mad-dog psychotic about acid starvation. LTH batteries have fewer but same thickness place aa their USA counterparts. But I guess they will build to spec anything the customer wants.

Crazy freakin' world!

Thanks for the heads-up.

[BFL13]

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
You can bet the house those batteries are U.S. Batteries.

Mex, since 2010, Interstate GC2 XHDs have been made in Mexico (for JC?) with "pure lead" instead of before, by US Battery re-branded U-2200s.

Your recent post about Mexican lead explains the "pure lead" mystery, since the 6s do have antimony in the mix based on the way they act.

Mine are now 4 yrs old and doing well as my second set of 6s after the "learner set" that I sort of wrecked 🙂

[MEXICOWANDERER]

You can bet the house those batteries are U.S. Batteries.

[joeshmoe]

Went to Costco yesterday. They Interstate GC-2 6V's and deep cycle marines for $89.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

I am left grumpy from a different thread........so excuse me in advance...

We used to have a federal agency that could receive requests for consumer protection. Now that agency deals only with outright fraud not mere deception.

Shady battery manufacturers and resellers like Interstate REFUSE to answer customer requests regarding positive plate thickness. They DO NOT want the customer to know. Why is it reputable OEM like Crown, Rolls, and Fullriver BRAG about positive plate thickness?

This is not a question of being forced to put plate thickness specs on the label. It is the question of the manufacturer REFUSING to respond to a demand for this specification.

I don't give a damn WHO it is - if they refuse to answer an inquiry about plate thickness THAT IS A FLAKY MANUFACTURER or RESELLER.

So - GO TO IT GENTS.

Start emailing the car jar industry and ask them....

WHAT IS THE THICKNESS OF THIS BATTERY'S positive plates? Nothing but a decimal answer will do.

"Proprietary Information" is a CON ARTIST'S answer. Trust me in this. The proof of this lays before you wide open.

[landyacht318]

I don't believe any claims about wal mart batteries being true deep cycle. A bathroom scale would show they weigh no more than the marine battery of the same size and only a smidge more than the starting battery of the same size.

Deep cycle internals stuffed into standard car jar sizes is a compromise, and even the few 12v jars available that were designed for deep cycle duty, as deep cycle batteries, are compromised, requiring higher absorption voltages applied for longer to shoehorn the amps to reach full charge.

But as most people know nothing about the states of charge of their batteries, they work 'just fine' until they don't at which point they get all flustered and start looking at somewhere to point their fingers. The battery depleter either seeks out a reason for the early demise, or just replaces the battery(s) to repeat the cycle.

The something for nothing crowd will seek to get an abused battery replaced under warranty, when the warranty should apply only to those batteries with manufacturing defects, not those that fail from overdischarge and insufficient recharge and complete owner ignorance about the proper charging requirements of a battery.

Without the ability of a charging source which can do higher voltages and durations these compromised 'deep cycle' batteries are simply doomed when heavily cycled night after night for weeks on end.

My Screwy 31's requirements are a bit ridiculous. If I could not adjust absorption voltage and durations and perform regular EQ charges, this battery would have been launched through the doors at USbattery with a hate note attached on the second month of cycling.

Only by force feeding it at rather ridiculous voltages has it lasted as long as it has, and I can now hear it ticking as the cycles approach 400, water usage has increased and voltages under load have fallen.

A drycamper's needs are quite different from the pedestal crowd. If heavily cycling a battery then most 12v jars are a serious compromise and require special charging treatment. They are the 'Special' battery, when 'special' is a politically correct term used not to offend.

The person who drives from pedestal to pedestal and only occasionally camps without hookups might be well served by a 12v dual purpose battery, but those cycling their batteries hard and heavy are wasting their time and money on buying a battery that is so compromised for the task for which it is being employed.

And even the true 12v deep cycles need special treatment when employed in a heavy cycling situation, and arguably, even when not.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Read my long post about the reaction between the permeability of plate surfaces. This reaction has to occur on both positive and negative plates.

Now take a moment and dwell on the following...

ACID STARVATION

Why o why o why o why do TRUE deep cycle batteries have a lot more acid capacity than car jar batteries? No true deep cycle battery on the face of the earth has so little acid for so much plate surface active area as do car jar RV batteries.

Think about this point.

Do the true deep cycle batteries have an excess of acid or do the car jar batteries have an insufficient amount of acid?

Which battery type gets preferential design treatment from the battery manufacturer?

Then muse over the electrical EFFECTS that acid starvation has on the PERFORMANCE both discharge and recharging of the car jar battery.

What happens when a plate surface whose potential is READY to release sulfates into solution is inhibited by already saturated electrolyte? This is PART of the reason why cold temperatures cause the need for higher charging voltages.

ACID STARVATION. The bane of car jar cyclable batteries. Customers DEMAND more amperage capacity. Cells get more tightly packed with plates. The acid volume relationship gets poorer and poorer.

So does the ability of a charger to finish the last ten percent recharging the battery.

Why o why do true deep cycle batteries have "so much" acid? Golf car batteries? Scrubber batteries? Submarine batteries?

Why o why doesn't truly engineering oriented companies like Rolls & Surrette make car jar batteries?

There are no free lunches in this business.

Some jars are WORSE for starvation than others. Provide cells with the correct electrolyte / plate surface area relationship then see how that affects charging discharging electrical characteristics.

It would be LOVELY to have enough storage room to contain true deep cycle batteries that are not overly tall. But no one has the room to contain batteries that are not overly tall. Tall batteries generally do not move around to help agitate the electrolyte and help avoid stratification - the bane of tall batteries.

No free lunches. Mother nature sometimes is a cruel taskmaster.

This posting contains a lot of concepts and ideas. Please re-read until you absorb most of the permutations of design in relationship to what you experience with battery performance and recharging.

[retiredtoo]

I'm pretty sure that Wally is simply putting on a different sticker and playing word games. You'll replace the lower cost or higher cost battery in another 5 years window anyway. And the difference in rating is lost in the noise of how well you keep them serviced and on a good intelligent charger.

[NinerBikes]

The first year I owned my travel trailer, I did 10 extended trips. Being it's only just me in it, I was able to manage my electrical power consumption. The 21 foot trailer got a Group 24DC Walmart battery, evidently the manufacture thinks you'll camp on the grid at a RV park all the time, however, what's the point of having a little trailer if you aren't going to dry camp with it off the grid?

That Group 24 battery had no business on my trailer. It could not make it 1 day with the original incandescent lights dropping that battery below 50% and burning up 37 amp hours out of the 75 the battery made, when brand new. It lost capacity like crazy in 5 or 6 days. The stock WFCO 8955 was woefully inadequate to recharge the battery properly.

First thing I did was get a proper deep cycle battery with double the capacity of my walmart battery. A true deep cycle. I picked up a Trojan T-1275, but a pair of T-105's or going to Costco or Sam's for a pair of GC-2's would have served me just as well, if not better.

Second thing I did was read as much as I could on here about My Screwy 31, and BFL13's adventures with batteries, as well as mexwanderers post, as he was in the consulting business for batteries being proprerly used, not abused, and proper recharging.

Then I bought a solar panel that put out almost 7 amps, and bought a separate, good charge controller that I could adjust the bulk charge voltage setting to 15.0V, so that the battery would at least get very close, if not completely top charged, daily. I am talking 97 to 98% charged daily, seeing Specific gravity making 1.265 to 1.270 on a daily basis, and at the end of camping trips, bringing it back up to a full 1.275 to 1.280, never letting them sag to 1.250 at the end of the afternoon.

I also, concurrently, bought a Mega Watt switchable Power Supply Unit, the 30 amp version, and set it up to charge at 15.0V also, for those days where the voltage was low, and cloud cover for the day was going to interfere with solar being able to top things off for the day. Mega Watt also makes a 36 amp version.

The point I am making is that you'll have to read a LOT, test your Specific Gravity a LOT, in the beginning, and figure out what works for you. There are no short cuts with batteries for dry camping, or charging them... It's solely up to you to stay on top of the monitoring of them, and setting your charging system up correctly to get the job done.

I find Wal Mart Deep Cycle batteries a royal PIA to keep top charged and get them up where they belong after a week of camping. YMMV, there are a lot better batteries out there for that kind of money, that are true deep cycle batteries by design, not deep cycle batteries masking as car batteries in poor shape configurations for the job that really needs to be done. Get GC-2's and save the time and grief that taking the easy way out and just going to Wal Mart will cost you when you are out in the sticks camping.

[BFL13]

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Battery acid tends to stratify - a little - During heavy recharging but that does not have any negative consequences to either the battery or the recharge. The total time of the battery being stratified is limited to a half an hour or hour or so. Big deal. for a long time on this forum I have been harping about charging the batteries until slight bubbling in the cells is noted this is for a reason. The bubbling is an indicator that the electrolyte is mixed and is stopping and reversing any stratification that may have formed.

creating a charging profile that allows the electrolyte to bubble before stopping the absorbtion charge is desirable. In fact it is mandatory for optimum battery life. Most battery smart chargers have inflexible charge profiles. This point is precisely why I am so adamant about performing periodic Top Charging cycles. Letting a smart charger undercharge a battery to the point of unequal specific gravity readings between cells is a sorry way to maintain a battery. You will pay the price.

And please keep in mind a battery that is deeply cycled many times is a different animal from a battery that is infrequently cycled to 60 or 70 percent level of charge.

I have come across many wacky suggestions for charge profiles in various forums columns articles and websites. Most of them feed the ego of the author and ignore the reality of proper electro-chemical battery management.

The day that a plug n play battery charger has arrived is the same day somone will announce they have figured out a plug and play automatic algorithm for raising a child.

Spending 10-minutes per month managing a bank of batteries is a patherically small amount of time to ask for. Sort of like asking a driver to please periodically divert his eyes from texting to watching the road.

I wonder if that stratification during bulk is part of the explanation for the severe "progressive capacity loss" I got doing several 50-90s in a row. Not only is a 50-90 an "incomplete recharge" it stops before SG catches up at the end.

As noted in the previous post about the 27DCs, I had a hard time getting them back to 100% after some 50-90s. (Remember all that tipping up on end and so on I posted about back then?) There was much speculation at the time if the progressive losses were from stratification or sulfation. Progressive capacity loss also happened doing 50-90s with 6s, not just 27DCs, but the 6s were easy to "recover" since they gas so much and the 27DCs hardly showed any bubbles. Now we have the "Screwy 31" story on "recovery" which shows what the 27DCs would also need.

[BFL13]

mobeewan wrote:
I use the Walmart Everstart deep cycle batteries and have no issues with them since learning to properly charge and fill batteries. I talked with a rep at Johnson Controls a couple years ago. Any of the Walmart Everstart "deep cycle" batteries that have DC in the number (i.e. 24DC, 27DC, 29DC, 31DC) are supposed to be true deep cycle batteries and not "marine starting" (deep cycle/starting) batteries. Those that have MS in the number (i.e. 24MS, 27MS, 29MS, 31MS) are supposed to be "marine starting" (deep cycle/starting) batteries.

I used these for a few years. They were marked as "deepcycle/starting" right on them but had a different brand name ISTR Energizer, not sure now. Walmart here recently changed them all to Everstart. They have the same exact spec label on top but now say "deep cycle" on the battery but still show "deep cycle/starting" here in their description.

The spec label on top says 675 CCA, 850 MCA, 180RC, and 120AH. I think that is a real AH number from what I got using them as shown on the Trimetric.

http://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/everstart-marine-battery-27dc-850n/6000016951063

They worked for camping off-grid, but were very difficult to "recover" to 100% at home after doing several 50-90s in a row. Way too difficult.

Now I use 6s for that and they "recover" easily without all that agony. I would only use these 27DCs again for shallow cycles as when on solar, but never again for 50-90s. I also have T-1275 ("real" deep cycle 12s) and they also "recover" easily same as the 6s.

So based on all that, IMO these 27DCs are not "real" deep cyclers like the T-1275 is, and are meant to be for boat trolling use.

[mobeewan]

I use the Walmart Everstart deep cycle batteries and have no issues with them since learning to properly charge and fill batteries. I talked with a rep at Johnson Controls a couple years ago. Any of the Walmart Everstart "deep cycle" batteries that have DC in the number (i.e. 24DC, 27DC, 29DC, 31DC) are supposed to be true deep cycle batteries and not "marine starting" (deep cycle/starting) batteries. Those that have MS in the number (i.e. 24MS, 27MS, 29MS, 31MS) are supposed to be "marine starting" (deep cycle/starting) batteries.

[joeshmoe]

They will put a simple no-load tester on it and if reads at least 12.5V, they won't replace it. If it's less, they'll put it on a charger, then "load" test. If it holds up, they won't replace it. I tried to warranty one once, but since I just pulled it out of the car, it still had a surface charge, but wouldn't hold a charge for more than a couple days. So they denied replacing it.

[Eric212]

Thank you for all the replies, I believe I will go with the MAXX version of the battery, provided that I find the actual weight to be greater than the regular ones.

Another good point that was brought up is that my previous Everstart batteries may have not been made by Johnson Controls as these are. I still have my old batteries and will check on that.

I like having the warranty through WalMart too, as they are all over the country and handle replacement batteries pretty easily. (The person behind the customer service counter isn't likely to be an expert on battery failure, and will just take it back no questions asked)

Thanks again!