[BusNit]

What is the consensus on a sealed engine start battery Vs one with caps? I live in a hot climate and was wondering if a sealed battery is the way to go. I have two sealed for the generator which are good and two for the engine which are weak. There is acid visible when the caps are removed. My engine is a slow cranker and I’d like to upgrade to the 1400cca vs the 1150 rated that I have now. There is a FleetPride very close to my house that has the maintenance style 8D’s available for $340 + core.

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What is the consensus on a sealed engine start battery Vs one with caps? I live in a hot climate and was wondering if a sealed battery is the way to go. I have two sealed for the generator which are good and two for the engine which are weak. There is acid visible when the caps are removed. My engine is a slow cranker and I’d like to upgrade to the 1400cca vs the 1150 rated that I have now. There is a FleetPride very close to my house that has the maintenance style 8D’s available for $340 + core.

Too bad you are not close to me, I am getting ready to take out 6 8D's from my house bank to replace with Lithiums. They are 1 year old and have not been used much. We just dry camped for a week at our property in Tennessee and the batteries did just fine. We were not running any big loads really other than the coffee maker. Ran the fridge and a fan all night long without any issues. We generally ran the generator a couple times a day and it topped off the batteries. 

By sealed batteries you mean AGM? I have AGM's in my Wanderlodge and it sure is nice to not have to worry about keeping up with the water like with lead acids. 

I think my bus also starts a little slow, I think it might be the cable going to the starter. I really do not like the looks of it. I am going to replace it with a new cable and see if it improves. You can check and see if you are getting any loss in the cable with a voltage drop test, put your test lead on the positive on the battery and the positive terminal on the starter and it should be fairly close to zero when starting. You can repeat the test on the negative side as well.

Here is a good run down on a voltage drop test:
https://newellgurus.com/newreply.php?tid...lyto=64821

[BusNit]

Thanks Jeff!

I will replace the terminal clamp connectors as I feel they have seen better days. The battery I was referring to are sealed maintenance free versions of the 8D. I have two. Today I stopped in at FleetPride and they will bring in two 1400CCA 8D batteries for me tomorrow. I have two completely dead 8D batteries I removed with no voltage from the coach last year that were for the house. They got boiled over. My Lithium solar setup is running strong. Thinking of adding another 600a 30kw of lithium batteries.