Help With Leisure Battery Terminals

[Lenny HB]

Exide G80 a standard fit in Hobby's.

Exide G80 149.90 at Tanya

Or a Sonnenschein SL 75 a bit cheaper at £146.96 at Tanya

The Sonnenschein SL 75 is the same battery as the Exide G80, they make the Exide Gel's (part of same group). they are both the same caoacity just write the spec diffently.

Silly boy not knowing Blue is positive they also sometimes use green, earth is normally white or brown.

 

[daveandsan]

Silly boy not knowing Blue is positive they also sometimes use green, earth is normally white or brown.

When I were a lad Red was Positive and Black was Negative.

 

[Lenny HB]

When I were a lad Red was Positive and Black was Negative.

Never been that simple on Motorhomes or Caravans

 

[pappajohn]

Never been that simple on Motorhomes or Caravans

Agreed, just look at an Rvs wiring.... Mostly black with 4 digit trace numbers in faded white.

 

[JeanLuc]

This Varta is a wet sealed alternative to the Exide Gel 80 fitted in many German motorhomes. I plan to fit them when next I change the batteries. It is a low height model (190 mm).
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It seems that German vans commonly use a different colour coding system for 12V DC compared with what we are used to in the UK for 230V AC.
Hymer uses:
Black (or sometimes Blue) = +ve
Brown = -ve

If in doubt, always check with a multimeter before making any adjustments.
AND - if you switch from Gel to flooded lead-acid, don't forget to change the charging regime on the charging system. (You may well cook the new batteries otherwise). If you have a Schaudt EBL it is a small slider switch in the top right-hand corner of the front panel (unless this location and format has been changed on the most recent EBLs)

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[Lenny HB]

Just looked at that Varta only 200 cycles at 50% DOD compared to a good Gel which gives 500 cycles at 80% DOD. Personally my choice would be the GEL as I don't use EHU.

Standard UK wiring is + Blue, - White.

 

[daveandsan]

Think I will stick with the Exide Gel its 5 years old and still holding its charge OK but with only 80 ah I struggle after a couple of nights in Spring and Autumn even with a 140 amp solar panel.
So it looks like ordering 2 new batteries.

 

[pappajohn]

Think I will stick with the Exide Gel its 5 years old and still holding its charge OK but with only 80 ah I struggle after a couple of nights in Spring and Autumn even with a 140 amp solar panel.
So it looks like ordering 2 new batteries.

140watt panel will still only give you around 8 amps in summer....winter could be down to 2amps, if the sun shines.

 

[JeanLuc]

Just looked at that Varta only 200 cycles at 50% DOD compared to a good Gel which gives 500 cycles at 80% DOD. Personally my choice would be the GEL as I don't use EHU.

We rarely use hook-up either - only in winter really (last autumn we spent 6 weeks in France and Italy and hooked up for just one night to give the batteries a boost).
I agree that a gel will have greater cyclic durability than a flooded type but at a significant premium. The 2 x 80 Ah Exide gels in my motorhome when we bought it must have been the original equipment. It was 4 years old when we bought it. In the second year of our ownership, one failed and I replaced both with Elecsol 110 Ah sealed wet L-A. These are now about six years old and I am expecting to replace them before long. So (accepting that I do not know how the original batteries had been treated) the Elecsol replacements appear to have lasted as long as the gels - and they have been discharged to shut-down point on two or three occasions).
Being a German company, I suspect Varta err on the side of caution when declaring the cycle life of their batteries. Also, as I have a decent solar panel on the roof, and don't use heavy current consumers in the van, the deep cycle resilience of the gels is of less value to me. I can buy 4.6 Varta LFD90 for the price of 2 Exide ES900 (80 Ah) so that will get me back to a similar number of cycles for the money. Another advantage of flooded sealed batteries over gels is that they recharge much faster. The Absorption Stage of the recharge cycle on my Schaudt EBL99 lasts for about one hour for flooded batteries and an average of 8 hours (up to 10 hours) when set to gel. The same speed advantage applies when recharging from the solar panel or the alternator. So, as a non-hookup merchant who mainly uses aires abroad and CS sites in the UK, I prefer to go for the faster-charging and cheaper flooded sealed batteries.

 

[Lenny HB]

Probably not a lot wrong with your 5 year old Exide, we tend to use a lot more power these days & outside of summer solar does not give that much only need a bit of rain or cloud to reduce the output considerably.

Two new ones would be a wise choice not worth risking paring a new one with a 5 year old one.

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