Upgrade from Farm Battery to Golf Cart

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Upgrade from Farm Battery to Golf Cart

Postby daveesl77 » Fri Feb 23, 2018 5:34 pm

Ok, so when I first built Conch Fritter I had this ancient Mopar truck battery and used it for about a year. I mean it was super ancient, like 2006, but the damned thing actually worked for awhile. Anyway, I decided to try the 12v Rural King Farm version, deep cycle battery (which is actually an Exide). It did fine at first, but about 9 months in it began to lose some of its punch and storage life. Over the past month I've tried multiple things to try to get it to take a full charge and hold, but it just wouldn't go any further. By today, after 3 days of non-stop charging with the solar system, after a week of charging with the 120 v battery charging system, it would only get up to 11.9 volts. Plenty of water, it was just shot.

Luckily, it had the 12 month no hassle full replacement warranty and the warranty was to expire next Thursday. So I took it down to Rural King, knowing they would do an exact trade but I decided to see if they would go for an upgrade. I made the deal with the manager to swap the old battery for one new 6v golf cart and I'd buy another. No problems because I was still in the 1 year full replacement window. So now I have the two Exide/Rural King 6v batteries. Yes, they weigh a ton and it looks like they have a rating of around 200 ah., where the old 12v was about 80ah (if that). Actually, I weighed them and the two weigh about 40 lbs more than the original deep cycle 12v.

I figure with these bad boys, the 150 watts of solar the 2,000 watt Predator generator, I should be set for a fairly long run without any hookups. So my present out of pocket cost for these was the original $70 for the first 12v battery and another $70 for the new, non-replacement golf cart battery. $140 for batteries over the course of 3 years isn't bad, especially since I had used that old Mopar for several years in other campers I had before Conch Fritter.

I'll keep everyone updated on how these last. My review of the 12v Rural King Farm battery is a NO, did not last a year.

dave
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Re: Upgrade from Farm Battery to Golf Cart

Postby tony.latham » Fri Feb 23, 2018 8:12 pm

Dave:

A shocking post!

What are you going to do with all that juice? Why do you think the "farm" battery failed?

I have a sense some camping is in your bucket.

Tony
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Re: Upgrade from Farm Battery to Golf Cart

Postby daveesl77 » Sat Feb 24, 2018 7:47 am

Yes Tony, I was electrified with this knowledge!

Anyway, not sure why the deep cycle slowly failed. I doubt it got below 12 volts more than 4 or 5 times (like overnight) over the past year and was remedied immediately.

As to what all I can run now, well the deep cycle could run everything I had overnight. That includes a 120v dorm fridge running off of an inverter, computer tv and some LED lights. With this new setup, I should be able to go a significant amount of time without putting a dent in the battery capacity.

Regina and I love camping and in fact that is a reason we are now selling our house in Florida (hope to close on it in a week or so) and buying a house in eastern West Virginia (Marlinton), way more places to camp, not nearly as crowded, mountains , rivers and forests. While battery capacity was never a real problem with us in the past, we don't use that much except for the fridge, being able to go with this massive increase in capacity at a low cost...well just seemed like the thing to do.

My only concern is the additional weight. These two batteries weigh a combined 120 lbs. The previous deep cycle weighed about 70+ lbs. so a 40-50 lb difference. That did make me waffle some in making the decision, but since we won't be carrying as much stuff on our camping trips as we have in the past, then I figure we make up for it. Lot easier to drive 50 miles to find a camping spot than driving 500 miles.

:D
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Re: Upgrade from Farm Battery to Golf Cart

Postby tony.latham » Sat Feb 24, 2018 9:07 am

:thumbsup:
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Re: Upgrade from Farm Battery to Golf Cart

Postby Tom&Shelly » Sun Feb 25, 2018 1:54 pm

daveesl77 wrote:I was electrified with this knowledge!dave


Glad to hear you met with little resistance from the Rural King manager and were able to keep your electrical source current. Sorry, I'll shut up now. :roll:
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