Charging a marine battery

Wait a minute here. On one hand is a deep cycle battery, on the other hand is a regular battery. They are not designed to be used the same way. You may be able to charge them identically, but the deep cycle is intended to provide a lower current over a longer time than the regular battery, which is designed to provide huge starting current for a short time. Equating a deep cycle with a regular battery _is_ ludicrous. They may both use lead-acid chemistry, but their capabilities differ considerably.

Whether Ian is claiming that a motorcycle battery is a deep cycle battery is not clear, but it seems so, thus the issue about equating.

Ed

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Those differences are because of physical geometry. Neither will like to be run down to zero, neither will like to sit self-discharging. The reason starter batteries will deliver more instantaneous current is because of the larger surface area of the plates. The reason they will tolerate a deeper discharge (still not to zero), is because the plates are thicker - the opposite optimization. Otherwise, the care and feeding of the batteries is the same. The same charge regimen works for both.

Either will do the job of the other, though not optimally and they can be damaged more easily in the corners where they're not optimized..

I wasn't claiming anything at all - I was drawing attention to a type of maintenance charger that will charge a lead-acid battery, then maintain it just enough not to cause excessive gassing.

I merely cited the example that I've left a motorcycle battery on one for about 3 years and it comes to no harm as long as I work it every once in a while.

No doubt you have been confused by JF mischieviously twisting the facts as any opportunity to snipe.

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More absolutely irrelevant crap thrown in, just to make you look "smart". Antimony has nothing to do with the differences between "deep cycle" and "starter" batteries. What a self-important twit.

As I've already pointed out, this difference is caused by the *GEOMETRY* of the plates. The chargers are identical, other than perhaps you don't want to charge a deep-cycle battery at 100A. Neither should be.

Wrong.

You are. Find your own.

He wants you to do his research for him so he can look clever trotting it out to a newbie down the line.

Down the line? In the same thread.

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The above is fine - but it is not the point. Deep cycle vs starter batteries have different capabilities. The rate of discharge, and the depth of discharge are significant considerations in the care of those batteries.

That is incorrect. The "care" of the batteries includes consideration of charge _and_ discharge. You refer only to charging them, below:

Sometimes and sometimes not. If the "job" falls within an area where the capabilities overlap, either works, at least for some period of time. But that does not indicate that the batteries' capabilities are equal, or that the only differences are solely mechanical. The fact that they differ in capabilities - which you recognize and wrote about earlier - is the point.

Ed

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Only by extreme.

Balloney. Both want to be float charged, not left go (NiCds are the opposite).

I never said there were no differences - rather the opposite. Get real.

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Run a standard auto starter battery in a deep cycle application and you'll get maybe 30 to 150 charge/discharge cycles. Run the same battery as a car starter, and typically you'll get thousands of charge discharge cycles. See:

Maybe such misuse of the battery is what you have in mind where you said "extreme".

Again you mention charge, but you do not mention discharge.

And I never said or implied that you said there were *no* differences. You claim the _care_ is identical for both.

You said: "The chemistry is identical, as are the charging needs and care. The only differences are mechanical."

That is wrong - you continually ignore the discharge cycle. The batteries differ in capability as well as construction. "A deep cycle battery will typically outlast two to ten car batteries when used in deep cycle applications." See:

If you don't care about how long the battery will last, then the discharging part of the charge/discharge cycle won't concern you in the care of the batteries. The whole reason there are those two different types of batteries _is_ the discharge cycle, which you ignore.

Ed

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Sure, it's at the corner.

So?

Fact.

No shit? Boy, you're the genius.

Wow, we have a Capt. Obvious, here.