On 1 Jan 2014 at 17:45, Lee Hart wrote: > If you're only going to mow once a week, and only for 6 months of the > year, then a "marine RV" battery might be good enough for a year or two.
I'd say at least that, though it depends on how hard you work them. Elec-tracs, for example, don't demand much of their batteries. In fact the small frame tractors - the ER8-36 rider and the E8, maybe the E10, I'm not sure - all used 12v marine batteries as factory fitted. (Some were later upgraded to 6v golf car batteries.) They don't last as long as the golf car batteries, but I've heard reports of 3-5 seasons of use. Much also depends on the design and quality of the battery. Most folks use flooded marine batteries, which do vary quite a bit in their durability. However, I've been using a series-parallel string of 6 East Penn Deka Dominator group 24 gel batteries in my Elec-Trac E15 since 1998! To be fair, though, they haven't had a huge amount of use. I rarely mow with the E15 any more; now it mostly hauls stuff round the property in the summer, and plows the driveway in the winter. I've had one battery fail outright, and I notice reduced capacity now, but for my use the batteries are still entirely serviceable. I also use another 3 Dominators in series for an ER8-36 rider (actually an Avco New Idea R36). Those have been in use for I think about 4-5 years, but they're actually as old as the others. They sat in my garage, mostly untouched, for the rest of that time. (These batteries have almost no self discharge.) Their capacity has also fallen some, and again I've had one failure, but they also still have enough capacity to mow about an acre.. > A 30-minute discharge time is quite short. Indeed! If you're loading them that hard, the above is probably moot for you case - or else you need to rework your conversion for better efficiency. David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA EVDL Administrator = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = EVDL Information: http://www.evdl.org/help/ = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Note: mail sent to "evpost" and "etpost" addresses will not reach me. To send a private message, please obtain my email address from the webpage http://www.evdl.org/help/ . = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
