Another Battery Question

[Nereussailor]

After doing a lot of informative reading, I still have a question about golf cart batteries. In Nigel Caulders "Boat Owners Handbook", It talks briefly about golf cart batteries. It doesn't really give much information on 6 volt batteries. I assume that if each cell in a battery produces 2.1 volts then a fully charged 6 volt battery would be 6.3 volts when fully charged After letting my batteries sit for a few days after charging, they finaly stabilized at 6.28-6.32 for all four batteries. I'm also going to assume that for one year old batteries, this puts them in really good shape. I'm going to a load test this week and see how they hold up.

 

[Stu Jackson]

You could do it that way,

but another way would be to measure each 12V bank and see what they're doing, too. With your four batteries, you should have essentially 2 12V batteries in your house "bank", or two individal 12 V banks.

 

[Maine Sail]

I don't understand why...

I don't understand why you would want to measure each battery individually vs. just the bank. I suppose if you thought you had a bad battery you could single it out this way. If you bought the 6 volts together, and they are the same brand, with similar date codes I would not worry and just measure the bank. It's unlikely a 6v battery would be bad in less than three or four years. Remember these batteries are used to power golf carts & fork lifts and regularly draw down to well below 50% without any serious shortening of life span. My brother has six seasons on his bank of Trojan t105's and they are still like new!!!Some of the best money I spent last year was on a Xantrex XBM battery monitor. It was easy to install and I use it all the time for lots of different things!!-Maine Sailhttp://www.pbase.com/mainecruisinghttp://www.pbase.com/mainecruising/image/63300829/medium.jpg