Trojan # is T1275 This a flooded 150 amp hour battery that is the Gold Standard for flooded batteries. 5 to 7 years service Have a 4 year old set in my E2 and still get 25 miles range. IMHO the best battery for general use and abuse. 50% more capacity than AGM or Gel. Miserable heavy beasts to install but worth the trouble because of the extra range they provide. Cars ride a little better also.
Deka and other GC rated gels 95 amp hour battery generally give 7 years service
GC rated AGM 105 amp hour battery generally give 7 years service . Taking over the original equipment market lately.
Type MDC 31 Marine Deep Cycle 105 hour battery generally give 3+ years of service. My personal choice for my rebuilds because of price. I prefer those built by East Pen I have purchased 7 sets so far over the last 4 years and haven’t had a failure. Get mine from ORilley Auto Parts. $624 out the door.
Spiral wound Odyssey don’t seem to hold up well in Golf Cart deep cycle service. Others have had problems you are experiencing.
Blaming the car for a bad choice of batteries or poor battery maintenance and selling cheap to get rid of the problem is the main source of the cars I refurbish.
[quote=OLD HOUSEBOATER;33472]Trojan # is T1275 This a flooded 150 amp hour battery that is the Gold Standard for flooded batteries. 5 to 7 years service Have a 4 year old set in my E2 and still get 25 miles range. IMHO the best battery for general use and abuse. 50% more capacity than AGM or Gel. Miserable heavy beasts to install but worth the trouble because of the extra range they provide. Cars ride a little better though.
Deka and other GC rated gels 95 amp hour battery generally give 7 years service
GC rated AGM 105 amp hour battery generally give 7 years service . Taking over the original equipment market lately.
Type MDC 31 Marine Deep Cycle 105 hour battery generally give 3+ years of service. My personal choice for my rebuilds because of price. I prefer those built by East Pen I have purchased 7 sets so far over the last 4 years and haven’t had a failure. Get mine from ORilley Auto Parts. $624 out the door.
Spiral wound Odyssey don’t seem to hold up well in Golf Cart deep cycle service. Others have had problems you are experiencing.
Blaming the car for a bad choice of batteries or poor battery maintenance and selling cheap to get rid of the problem is the main source of the cars I refurbish.[/quote]
Hi, OH, it’s Tom Gunn again. Barry has recommended three batteries, two of which are gel and one a 6 volt. Seems I have 5 good Odysseys and one bad. Odyssey did not recommend the pc1700 I have for the cars either. Plus mine are 3-6 years old and adding a new one to the mix of not recommended for GEM is definitely the wrong path. I’ll likely go with your recommendation on the six pack for $625. My biggest concern is that I spend that on the batteries then find its the charger or controller or something else.
Do you think I can do a proper diagnostic run through by thoroughly charging the one bad battery (it will hold 12.5+ volts for 7-8 hours, with no load)? The other 5 are fine even though old and of mixed manufacture dates?
Also, where is the best place to get a voltage check on the pack? Is the +/- leads on top of the charger appropriate? I plan to put a volt meter on the car as the charge indicator on the dash seems highly suspect.
No the bad one will color the results. And the charger might show an error.
DON’T get hung up on not using a different type battery for chasing down your problem. Just make sure it is close in Amp hour capacity. IE: a flooded 105 amp hour is OK for trouble shooting another Flooded, a 95 amp hour Gel, or a 100 amp hour AGM. (or your odditys)
People selling batteries will ALWAYS tell you to replace the entire Pack when one fails. Hell the make their living selling these things, They tell you the old batteries will be hard on the replacement. SO WHAT. If you get an extra season or 2 out of the pack your money ahead. At our ages The $1000 bucks we didn’t waste on a new set of batteries will be enjoyed by our heirs.
My good friend sells batteries. His take is; under 4 years old replace the bad batteries one at a time as they fail. Over that you can replace the pack. He doesn’t tell his customers that though. He cherry picks the take outs and does a good business on used units.
Note: He comes to your door and changes out gels with New Deka for $1600 a set in our area.
[quote=OLD HOUSEBOATER;33472]Trojan # is T1275 This a flooded 150 amp hour battery that is the Gold Standard for flooded batteries. 5 to 7 years service Have a 4 year old set in my E2 and still get 25 miles range. IMHO the best battery for general use and abuse. 50% more capacity than AGM or Gel. Miserable heavy beasts to install but worth the trouble because of the extra range they provide. Cars ride a little better also.
Deka and other GC rated gels 95 amp hour battery generally give 7 years service
GC rated AGM 105 amp hour battery generally give 7 years service . Taking over the original equipment market lately.
Type MDC 31 Marine Deep Cycle 105 hour battery generally give 3+ years of service. My personal choice for my rebuilds because of price. I prefer those built by East Pen I have purchased 7 sets so far over the last 4 years and haven’t had a failure. Get mine from ORilley Auto Parts. $624 out the door.
Spiral wound Odyssey don’t seem to hold up well in Golf Cart deep cycle service. Others have had problems you are experiencing.
Blaming the car for a bad choice of batteries or poor battery maintenance and selling cheap to get rid of the problem is the main source of the cars I refurbish.[/quote]
Does this sound like the battery that you get from O’reillys?
Super Start Marine - Battery
Line: SSB | Part # 31DCM
1 Year Limited Warranty
UPC: 83996011076
Battery Type: Deep Cycle
Group Size (BCI): 31
Cold Cranking Amps (CCA): 555 CCA
Marine Cranking Amps (MCA): 690 MCA
Voltage (V): 12 Volt
Length (In): 13 Inch
Width (In): 6-3/4 Inch
Height (In): 9-1/2 Inch
Group Size (BCI): 31
Cold Cranking Amps (CCA): 550 CCA
Cranking Amps (CA): 690 CA
Reserve Capacity (min): 210 Minute
Voltage (V): 12 Volt
Length (In): 13 Inch
Width (In): 6-3/4 Inch
Height (In): 9-1/2 Inch
Weight (Lbs): 59.5 Lbs.
Terminal Type: DIN
I can get them for $605 plus $18 core charge. Are they flooded?
[quote=Todd;33216]I am going to use it tomorrow, and I’ll check the batteries individually after some use. If I have time I will monitor one at a time as I drive it.
I have another question: Just what does the % of charge meter monitor?[/quote]
Us newbies are getting mixed messages here. Barry says Marine batteries are not good while Old Houseboater says MDC, that’s Marine Deep Cycle, are what he has good luck with. Both Todd and Tommy seem to have cranking batteries, as do I, and we all three are having similar problems. For clarity, a “marine” batteries may be cranking OR deep cycle. I agree with OH that Cranking batteries are not for GEM or any other applications other than CRANKING! My car had $300+ Odyssey CRANKING batteries. Some jack leg put these 3-6 year old batteries in the car, put 4/16 Odyssey date stamps in the proper place on top of the batteries… and sucker me thought I was getting new batteries. OH recommends MDC batteries. Period. I’m going with him. FYI, if a battery specs is given in CCA, cold cranking amps, IT IS NOT A DEEP CYCLE. MDC specs will be given in Amp hours, Ah, with no mention of cranking amps. Neither the car or the charger will operate properly with CRANKING batteries. My, Todd and Tommy experience confirm this. OH, if this is wrong, please weigh in! I’m biting the bullet and replacing my $300+ Odyssey batteries ( 1 of which is bad) with the OH recommended MDC batteries from O’Reilly or Exides with similar specs from Home Depot for $89 @
WTF??? Todd just asked OH if a specific battery was the one he recommended. It was plainly described as a STARTING battery and listed CCA in its specs! OH said, yep, that’s the one. WTF?
I think that this battery may fall into the category of dual purpose (SLI and DCM). As OHb stated in his battery preferences, these batteries have a shorter life expectancy than the more expense ones. This it is a trade-off to save some $$$ on a unit that you might not be hanging onto.
I will also add an update to my battery woes: I’m still traveling, so I haven’t been able to swap in another set of batteries, as OHb suggested. I’ve been using the GEM everyday (maybe 3 to 4 miles). I plug in the charger in the evening, and by morning the green LED is on and the BDI reads between 78% to 95% every morning. The charger must not cycle itself on after it had charged sufficiently to turn on the green LED.
I’m a believer in whatever Old Houseboater says. My opinion comes only from experience and observation. It seems that after being involved with this thread that it has been a negative experience for me. I will politely now sit it out, observe and wait for the experts to answer. Sincerely, Barry.
Barry, if my comments were taken personally, they were not intended that way. Those who come here seeking help have neither your experience nor have observed what you have. We have to rely on the information provided. If that information is confusing or contradictory, it makes for an extremely frustrating situation for those learning the ropes (or volts!). OH has been very helpful and I really appreciate his taking his own time to help others who share common interests. Those not familiar with terminology can easily be confused. When a deep cycle marine battery is recommended and that batter’s very NAME has Super START in it, that is confusing. How else can us newbies communicate that WE DON’T UNDERSTAND if we don’t point out what is confusing to us? From the dates on this GEM site, it’s obviously we are a VERY small group. Don’t make it smaller… we need all the help we can get and it’s obvious we aren’t going to get it from anyone but us chickens. Accurate, clear, and concise information is important to newbies. Anything else just makes a bad situation worse.That’s a fact and is the only point I make.
Mine are the Group 31 Marine Deep Cycles. I picked them up at Sam’s Club, they’re labeled as Energizers. They don’t hold a charge now like they did when new, I guess they’re just older now. Started noticing it a couple months ago. They are almost 1 year old. I don’t take my Gem long distances so as long as it’s charged up it should go 5-10 miles which is fine I guess.
I just went out and checked the car and batteries showed 25 percent charge, then changed to 15 percent and remain there. Seems like it always changes the actual amount I’ve noticed after initial power on. It’s been sitting about 2 weeks now, not charged or driven. I’ve only driven the car about 400 miles on these batteries, seems odd that they’re going bad already.
So it’s winter now here so the car will be sitting till it warms up. I’ll just charge it once a week to keep them up. I tried shutting main off and they still dropped charge.
Awhile back I tested each battery and there was one battery that was always lower in voltage and low and behold it was the battery that was manufactured one month older. I wouldn’t think that would make much difference.
Edit, well actually they state Group 29HM on the side. They sell a Group 31 Duracell but that also states 29HM on the side of battery too so I don’t know if they’re really group 31 or not, probably 29. And I have one that is made 11/15 and the rest are 1/16 so it’s two months older actually than the rest, but that one has a lower voltage when I tested but not a lot different.
did you verify that your charger was set to flooded. Flooded setting is stronger than Gel. A Gel setting is too weak to bubble the electrolyte in wet cells This bubbling stirs the fluid to make sure the entire cell gets a charge. A flooded battery will lose a 1/3 of its capacity in 6 months on a gel setting
No, I looked in the charger but there’s no dial to change it. Must be the original charger with only one setting. So would I have to use the Trojans? Or else replace charger?
Does anyone know if you have the NG1 charger without the dial selector to change charging types, what is it set for by default? AGM, gel, or flooded? As far as I know, mine’s never been changed so it should be default. If I were to buy batteries and this is a stock 2002 which would I buy?
I looked at the Trojan gel and they are 330.00 each. The cheapo Energizers stayed charged up for about 9 months before I started to notice that they were dropping voltage just sitting and I get that they’re not the right batteries for the car, but 600.00 vs 2000.00 is huge and if I can get 2 years or more, I think I’d rather save the cash.
Right now, they’ll charge up fine and I get get plenty of distance with them, so I can see them going another year, unless they start to go south pretty quick. I did find a local dealer than can order the Trojan’s but I don’t know if I’ll have to pay shipping on them or not, hopefully not because other online places are quoting 175.00 each on shipping.
I think I have a bad battery. I checked each battery while charging and the oldest one is over .5 volts under the rest, which the manual indicates is a bad battery. almost .75 volts less.
Hmmmm… Was just reviewing and noticed you indicate a 4/16 date stamp on your Odyssey batteries. In my case, the date stamp was a scam. After contacting Odyssey I discovers the manufacturer label and date label indicated they were all made over 5 years ago. I also learned the PC1700 are STARTER batteries, not deep cycle, and NOT RECOMMENDED FOR EV USE! I also learned their warranty is for only one year and even that is basically worthless covering manufacturing defects… NOT ACTUAL PERFORMANCE. At their exorbitant prices of over $300 @ I will not be replacing with Odyssey. Oldhouseboater has a list of recommended replacements.
So I exchanged the bad battery. I couldn’t get it to stay above 12 volts overnight. Usually around 10.5-11.5 volts resting the next day.
But I still have a charging problem. All of the batteries besides the very front battery are charging at 16.3 volts approx. The front battery is about 1 volt less approx 15.3 volts. Wondering if this led to a premature failure in the previous battery in same spot? Why would this one battery not charge at same voltage as the rest? Connections are tight and clean. This is the battery that has the temp sensor on top I think that’s what it is.