Home Forums Gear Hunting Trucks and Four-Wheel Drives Deep cycle RV batteries.

Okay here is a can of worms I will open, favorite brands always bring out the opinion in folks!

What is the best deep cycle battery you have used?

For me I have a Craftsman AGM Marine Battery the Blue one. It's been absolutely astonishing to use, charge and use again. For 5 years now it's still good as new.

I have a Trojan in the camper. Likely one of the best most expensive batteries made. It's been good for 2 years but recently will only hold the charge for about 30 minutes after taking it off the charger. Then it drops quickly. It's about 2 years old. All my batteries run on a maintainer full time.

I also have a craftsman AGM Marine Battery on the boat that Is the " House" battery. It stays charged by the on board maintainer as well.

I'm temped to just buy another Craftsman AGM Marine Battery for the camper because it has been so good to recharge and lasted 5 years for the trolling motor. However before I spend the hundreds of bucks on another deep cycle battery I though I would get other opinions.

Last couple I've bought have been Duracell from SAMs club.

Made in USA by eastern penn.


Even bought a Duracell agm for my Polaris ranger.

I've had very good success with Interstate Deep Cycle batteries. The one in my camper is almost 8 years old and still holds a charge. Used to use them hard on my boat and they would last an average of about 4 years before losing storage capacity. Ran a 24V trolling motor with them and most weekends would almost completely discharge them.

If you want one that will carry a lot of juice, go with 2 6V golf cart batteries in series. 2 of them will carry as much juice as 3 12V Marines. The highest capacity ones I've found are Interstates. They aren't cheap but they're made to last.

For RV use, look at the Reserve Capacity. That's the number of minutes a battery can deliver 25 amps without dropping below a certain voltage (around 10V I think). Most Marine batteries will be 100 to 200 min. A good golf cart battery will top 400.

Thanks Rock chuck, I will have to see what the dimensions are and what can fit in the space available.

Being a farmer and part time welder I end up buyin my share of batteries...anything made by Johnson controls seem to be best...

I got a battery from an army guy used in 2006 or 7 and put it in one of my diesel welding machines...it can sit all winter and fire right up never seen a battery last 9 years...Optima........

The best ones I've used are interstate.

Which are made by Johnson Controls.

2 optima's in the boat are 10 years old. However heard the recent ones are not near as good.

Which are also made by Johnson Controls. Interesting.

I just got into them a year ago when I bought a little slide in camper. Research didn't show a big differnce in any of them inthe $150 range and less.I suppose when you double that, you can get better bateries.One thing I found,no one has more than a 1 year guarantee on them now.I did buy the Sears one.

What he said! Having only used 2 of the 6-volt deep cycles I will never go back to 12-volt for our travel trailer. The furnace fan EATS voltage when you need to run in cold weather. As RC said, two 6v is like having three 12-volts.

When I got my golf cart batteries from Interstate, I asked the best procedure for maintaining them for long life. He said that any time you have electricity available, keep them on a 2v trickle charger, year round and especially when it's HOT. Keeping them at full charge all the time prevents sulfation which is lead crystallizing on the plates. Here's a rundown on it that I found online. This applies to all vehicle batteries, too.


People kill more deep cycle batteries with poor charging practices, than die of old age!
During the normal discharge process, soft lead sulfate crystals are formed in the pores and
on the surfaces of the positive and negative plates inside a lead-acid battery. When a
battery is left in a discharged condition, continually undercharged, or the electrolyte level is
below the top of the plates, some of the soft lead sulfate re-crystallizes into hard lead
sulfate. It cannot be reconverted during subsequent recharging. This creation of hard
crystals is commonly called permanent "sulfation". It accounts for approximately 85% of the
deep cycle lead-acid battery failures. The longer sulfation occurs, the larger and harder the
lead sulfate crystals become. The positive plates will be light brown and the negative plates
will be dull, off white. These crystals lessen a battery's capacity and ability to be recharged.
This is because deep cycle batteries are typically used for short periods, vacations,
weekend trips, etc, and then are stored the rest of the year to slowly self discharge. Car
batteries are normally used several times a month, so sulfation rarely becomes a problem.
As a consequence of parasitic load and natural self-discharge, permanent sulfation occurs
as the lead-acid battery discharges while in long term storage. (Parasitic load is the
constant electrical load present on a battery while it is installed in a vehicle even when the
power is turned off. The load is from the continuous operation of appliances, such as a
clock, security system, maintenance of radio station presets, etc.) While disconnecting the
negative battery cable will eliminate the parasitic load, it has no effect on the natural selfdischarge
of a car battery. Self-discharge is accelerated by temperature. Thus, sulfation
can be a huge problem for lead-acid batteries not being used, sitting on a dealer's shelf, or
in a parked vehicle, especially in HOT temperatures. Car and deep cycle lead-acid
batteries are perishable!