My brother & I own a family property in Northern Maine. The property is large, 250+ acres. As such, we have a lot of equipment, tractors, excavators, dump truck, bulldozer etc..
To make a long story short I am tearing apart and painting our snow-blower tractor a 2013 Kubota B3030. The start battery is the original battery it shipped from the factory with in 2013. When not in use we keep in well charged (Victron). Just this past winter we hit -23F and the B3030 fired right up with zero issues..
The photo below is the Kubota battery next to a Group 31 AGM it's tiny (a G-51)..
This Photo is the Kubota Spec.
You read that correctly, this 30HP 4 cylinder Kubota V1505 starts perfectly on a single 430CCA battery and does so just fine even at -23F. Would I recommend this battery for a sailboat? No, because on a sailboat a deep-cycle battery is a better start/reserve battery. Yanmar gets this and why the battery for Yanmar marine engines is specified in Ah and not CCA.. A small G51 start battery cannot be deep-cycled in an emergency or it will be destroyed but it sure can start your Universal or Beta Diesel.... This is why for more than 25 years I have been installing deep-cycle batts as the start/reserve for sailboats. They are built better, last longer and in an emergency, & you won't destroy it by doing a few deep cycles if you need to....
The idea that deep-cycle batteries can’t be used for starting always gives me a good chuckle.
While DC batteries have less CCA per pound than a start only batt they usually have plenty of CCA to start all but the biggest diesels. They also have a better build quality, last longer and when you do need to rely on the start batt to power the boat in an emergency. The deep cycles wont kill them like it will a start battery
As an example, The batteries below came out of a customers boat in 2019 when we converted his boat to LiFePO4. They were 4 years old at the time. They are East Penn (West Marine) G31 deep cycle batts. After sitting in our 50k pound Cat excavator since October they fired her up first try just as they have been doing since 2019..
After we pulled a few stumps i plugged in the Victron IP65 and equalized them..pretty sure we’ll get another few years out of them… Even my 5.7L Toyota V8 starts on a used deep cycle battery as does our F550 diesel dump truck and our Cat Dozer......
She's no toy either, that barn is 80' long.......
Don't just take my word for it here's this from Trojan Battery...
My point in all this is to stop folks from over buying start batts for sailboats. A percentage of boat owners have two start batteries in parallel because they "think" they need to...
To make a long story short I am tearing apart and painting our snow-blower tractor a 2013 Kubota B3030. The start battery is the original battery it shipped from the factory with in 2013. When not in use we keep in well charged (Victron). Just this past winter we hit -23F and the B3030 fired right up with zero issues..
The photo below is the Kubota battery next to a Group 31 AGM it's tiny (a G-51)..
This Photo is the Kubota Spec.
You read that correctly, this 30HP 4 cylinder Kubota V1505 starts perfectly on a single 430CCA battery and does so just fine even at -23F. Would I recommend this battery for a sailboat? No, because on a sailboat a deep-cycle battery is a better start/reserve battery. Yanmar gets this and why the battery for Yanmar marine engines is specified in Ah and not CCA.. A small G51 start battery cannot be deep-cycled in an emergency or it will be destroyed but it sure can start your Universal or Beta Diesel.... This is why for more than 25 years I have been installing deep-cycle batts as the start/reserve for sailboats. They are built better, last longer and in an emergency, & you won't destroy it by doing a few deep cycles if you need to....
The idea that deep-cycle batteries can’t be used for starting always gives me a good chuckle.
While DC batteries have less CCA per pound than a start only batt they usually have plenty of CCA to start all but the biggest diesels. They also have a better build quality, last longer and when you do need to rely on the start batt to power the boat in an emergency. The deep cycles wont kill them like it will a start battery
As an example, The batteries below came out of a customers boat in 2019 when we converted his boat to LiFePO4. They were 4 years old at the time. They are East Penn (West Marine) G31 deep cycle batts. After sitting in our 50k pound Cat excavator since October they fired her up first try just as they have been doing since 2019..
After we pulled a few stumps i plugged in the Victron IP65 and equalized them..pretty sure we’ll get another few years out of them… Even my 5.7L Toyota V8 starts on a used deep cycle battery as does our F550 diesel dump truck and our Cat Dozer......
She's no toy either, that barn is 80' long.......
Don't just take my word for it here's this from Trojan Battery...
My point in all this is to stop folks from over buying start batts for sailboats. A percentage of boat owners have two start batteries in parallel because they "think" they need to...
