how long will my minn troll?

[BrandonH]

Mate you can't go past a deep cycle for a minn kota!! a normal battery won't last half as long as a deep cycle. I don't understand all of it but I do know that deep cycle's can produce the same current longer (or something like that ). where as a normal battery sorta peaks its output but can't hold a continuos output. you can get gel deep cycles but they are very expencive.. I run 2x 120amp hours for mine and wouldnt run outa charge running both for a full day flat stick. (I would certinally get onto the second bat though )

Cheers
Brandon.

[-Henno-]

Here is an excerpt from a PDF file sent to me from the head honchos of Battery World Australia. #It is the Technical Guide for Gel Tech batteries.----------------------------------------------------------------

Does depth of discharge affect cycle life? Yes! The harder any battery has to work, the sooner it will fail.
Then there is a graph that shows the percentage of discharge and the number of charge cycles you will get out of it. #Basically for gel it said 100% discharge you'll get 300 cycles out if it and if you recharge after 10% discharge you'll get 3800 cycles before it dies then it goes on to say:

As you can see, the shallower the average discharge, the longer the life. This is why it's important to size a battery system to deliver at least twice the average power required, to assure shallow discharges.

I haven't been in contact with Craig at Alco batteries yet to get his opinion of this matter yet though.

Mark

[fish2eat]

bump

[-Henno-]

Now I have just gotten off the phone to Craig at Alco who says I should be charging it after every use and also suggested giving it another 'tickle up' before I go out and play with it again.

Think I will be getting the charger out every time.

[gogecko]

I might buy a deep cycle, as a second battery just for the minn kota.

So I can use the same 5400ma charger that Ive got? It will take about the same charge time?

Andrew

[MulletMan]

Is a Gel battery a calcium battery?

We had these calcium batteries on three rescue boats and learnt to hate them with a vengeance!

Justr could not keep them charged no matter what we did! They checked out as fully charged in the afternoon but next morning had trouble even cranking the motor over!

Eventually chucked them out and just bought ordinary old mainternance free batteries and no more problems.