Berkshire House Batteries

[Michael Nelson]

I plan to replace my Pacer flooded house with EXIDE sealed graphite batteries. The flooded batteries leaks and corrodes the battery compartment. I have the dry cell battery in my classic Bronco and love it. After sitting for long periods, it has great cranking power. I used the dry cell deep cycle in my previous coach with great success. Does anyone have the conversion specs for the Pacers to the Exides.

[RodneyD]

Stay with your flooded units. You will cook a sealed battery. I speak from experience change my house batteries with maintenance free and cooked them within 6 months went back with Interstate flooded and all is good. Just clean your compartment with WD40 and make sure your battery caps are on good. Keep distilled water on hand and a squirt bottle and ck level regularly and you can experience years of good service.

[john1345]

That's right you will cook them. I replaced mine with 4 L-16 interstate lead acid batteries. They fit in our Berkshire, the cost was not to bad @$276 each( sola Bills at q-site)

[camaraderie]

There is no such thing as a sealed graphite battery...except perhaps in a marketing department. Sounds like you are looking for an AGM (absorbed glass mat) sealed battery and you need one that is a TRUE deep cycle. Excide does not make one....despite labling their megacycle marine as one.
If you have a modern 3 stage charger/converter in your Berk.... you will not cook a conventional deep cycle AGM. But they do require SOME differences in care while relieving you of standard water duties. In Particular...they should always be recharged fully, NEVER left to cook on the shore power for weeks or months unattended, vented properly to prevent overheating in hot climates and never equalized.
I would suggest AGM's from Trojan or Deka Marine (DC model #'s) and simply buy the biggest ones that fit in the space you have available. If you can fit FOUR batteries I would suggest the Trojan Golf Cart 6V AGM's wired in series/parallel as being a great choice.
Good luck.

EDIT...Just an additional note. There are some MUCH cheaper sealed batteries which are often used in car STARTING applications. In reality these are WATER/LEAD/ACID based conventional batteries with a sealed water reservoir. They're fine for cars but AWFUL for RV's and WILL get cooked as the water boils off in deep cycle use and cannot be replaced.

[RoamingEngineer]

I just replaced my house and chassis batteries and while I had everything removed from the compartment, I used naval jelly and then sanded down the whole battery compartment.

I then sprayed the entire compartment with truck bed liner and re-installed everything.

Any spills now clean up really easy and no corrosion.