Golf Cart Battery

[CampDavid]

If you were buying new 6 volt golf cart battery's is there a brand that offers the best value and performance in the lead acid style battery 220ah.

I can buy Crown and US Battery at a similar price point, any thoguhts?

FLETCH

[S/V Antares]

Trojan 105's have a stellar reputation , <$120 USD

I would be tempted by the Sams club "Energizer" About $80 USD

[captain465]

Consider Rolls batteries.....a little on the pricy side, but carry a 5 year warranty.Have 4 golf cart and 4 group 23's on my boat.

[S/V Illusion]

The differences are not that great between the "best" and the mediocre brands. You'll find the cheap ones, when properly taken care of, will last longer than the "best" (read most expensive) when treated improperly, undercharged or not cycled.
In other words, take care of them any almost any brand will last a while.

[evm1024]

I have had good luck with East Penn (Deka) Golf Cart batteries. If you have a distributor near by you may be able to find a way to get them at wholesale cost.

If you are a boat builder (you are rebuilding part of your boat arn't you?) or you work qualifies then who knows.

--Ethan

[btrayfors]

Originally Posted by S/V Illusion

The differences are not that great between the "best" and the mediocre brands. You'll find the cheap ones, when properly taken care of, will last longer than the "best" (read most expensive) when treated improperly, undercharged or not cycled.
In other words, take care of them any almost any brand will last a while.

Well, yes and no. Just a clarification. If you're talking about the "best" flooded batteries, then you're talking about Rolls/Surette deep cycle batteries which are much more robust than most others (e.g., Trojans, Crowns, Dekas, etc.). Given decent care they will last 10-15 years or more. The others, given decent care, will last about 4-7 years on average.

If you mistreat them, though, you can kill a new battery in less than a year.

There are also real differences amongst the medium to low-priced golf cart batteries. Whether or not the average user will see a difference, however, depends heavily on how demanding is the service they are put to, and how discerning/sophisticated is the user in terms of battery care and evaluation.

Bill

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by CampDavid

I can buy Crown and US Battery at a similar price point, any thoguhts?

FLETCH

If everything is equal I would get the US Battery. But if taken care of properly I don't feel there is much diference between "good" and "best" anymore. I got some renamed Dekka batteries earlier this year just because they were less trouble for me to go get them and they seem pretty good.

[Maine Sail]

The US Battery 6V's are excellent batteries and the Crown's are too. I personally feel the US Battery is on par with Trojan and lots of golf courses have made the switch to US Battery for their carts.. They are my preferred 6V battery but I lack a darn distributor in Maine. It gets expensive to drive to MA and pick them up so I use a lot of Deka or Crown.

Many Sam's Club's now sell the Deka/East Penn brand of batteries and the are sold / branded under the Duracell badge. They are the same battery that West Marine sells, and Deka sells, branded as Deka's only Sam's sells them for a LOT less money, less than half what WM does..... The EGC2 6V is a 230Ah battery. The GC2 is a 215Ah battery.

Lots of choices and they're all pretty good...

[senormechanico]

My neighbor heads to Alaska every year in his 50' Californian.
Two years ago, he replaced all ten of his ten year old Interstate 220 aH 6 volt batteries just to make sure he'd not have a problem while cruising.
They've been well cared for and had an automatic watering system in his boat.
He gave them to me for the core cost.
After making sure they were all charged and performing a load test, I put them into service in my home's backup power system.
I had to replace only one of the batteries and I bought a Costco golf cart 220 aH.
They are in a series parallel arrangement and all are still holding up nicely.
After disconnecting all of them yesterday, I again performed a 50 and 100 amp load test.
There are only a couple of them that are beginning to get a little 'squishy'.
All held their voltage nicely for a couple of days before the test was performed.
I used my Fluke Scopemeter to grab the Max, Min, Average and Now voltages on each battery.
With a 50 amp load for 5 seconds, the worst one dropped about a half a volt.
The best one was about 0.25 volt drop.
With the 100 amp test, the best pair dropped 1.2 volts.

My new 200aH LiFePo4 batteries on the boat were also tested at 100 amps for 5 seconds. The voltage drop was 0.4 @100 amps and that might have been due to the 1 gauge connector in between the two pairs in the installation.
Gotta love those new batts !!!