Batteries

[Karl]

At the risk of sounding dumber than I really am,

I have a couple of batteries that I have purchased over the years, and I think that I may have gone in the wrong direction.

What style of battery do I want to use for my 62' Merc 850 and/or 73' Evinrude 85hp? Deep Cycle or Cranking? I only use the boats for slow "coffee cruising" and hot laps around our small lake. One boat has a radio that is hardly ever used, other than that, all I have as far as electronics are lights/bilge.

Thanks

Karl

[Guest]

Deep cycle batteries are designed to put out like 20 amps and be drained to 40-50% of capacity. Cranking batteries are designed to put out 150 amps or even more, and if you drain them below around 50% you permanently reduce their storage capacity.

You don't want either of those. Since those motors don't put out much charge, if you use a cranking battery and spend a long day you might drain the charge level enough to damage it. If you use a deep cycle you might not have enough amps to start it on a cold day with damaging the battery.

Everybody now sells dual cycle batteries. That's what you want. They can be drained almost as low as deep-cycle batteries, but they put out almost as many amps as a cranking / starting battery. And since you're not trying to start a big monster that's more than you need.