6v Batteries Report

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an RV or an interest in RVing!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Dan de La Mesa

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 18, 2015
Posts
129
Since replacing our 12v batteries with 6v in our 2006 Winnebago View, we have only recently had a chance to try them out. We have done only limited dry camping, mostly because our previous battery setup (which was wired wrong by the previous owner) was never satisfactory.

We just returned from an 8-day, mostly dry camping trip during which I'm delighted to report that the new 6v setup performed heroically. The voltage indicator never fell below 12.5, and the solar panel kept the charge maxed out at over 14 whenever the sun was on the roof.

While I can't confirm that the improved performance was totally due to the 6v/12v changeout (since the previous wiring was said to be wrong), I can attest to the fact that we felt fully supported with all the power we needed. Only the air conditioning and the microwave were unavailable, and we didn't need either.

I made the swap-out in response to a number of recommendations on this forum, so I wanted to report my own experience as confirmation.
 
THe GC-2 is genarally about 220 amp hours capacity (205-235 depending on brand) (When you put two in series you add voltage not amp hours) so the two of them make... basically a 4D (12 volt at 220 amp hours)  THe thing is the GC-2 is 1/2 the weight of the 4D so that makes 'em 4 times easier to wrangle.

Your 12 volt size are
24  75 AH
27/29 about 100 (27 just under 29 over)
31---130

BUT you can only use about 20% safely on a MARINE/deep cycle.. opposed to 50% on the GC-2

Just so you know the math.
 
THe thing is the GC-2 is 1/2 the weight of the 4D so that makes 'em 4 times easier to wrangle.

Lest somebody get the wrong impression, note that the total battery weight is the same.  A pair of GC2 6v's producing around 220AH will weigh about 130 lbs. That's also about what a single 4D deep cycle with a similar  AH rating weighs.  The advantage of two batteries vs one is that you get the opportunity to shift half the weight at a time, making them easier to deal with without a fork lift!

The amp-hours and voltage is directly related to the amount of lead plates, so the weights of any any lead-acid battery with equivalent voltage and AH is going to be the same. There is no escaping the basic physics involved in lead acid battery chemistry. However, packing all the plates in one case instead of 2 or 4 reduces the space and weight used by the case by a modest amount.

 

Forum statistics

Threads
131,749
Posts
1,384,212
Members
137,520
Latest member
jeep3501
Back
Top Bottom