Golf Cart Batteries Your Solution?

Many RVers swear by the use of golf cart batteries over conventional RV deep cycle batteries. There are some good things to be said for the golf cart batteries--they have thicker internal plates, which usually makes for a longer-lasting battery bank. Since they're designed to push around heavy golf carts (and heavy golfers) they usually have a much higher amp-hour capacity.

Still, keep in mind a golf cart battery is a six volt battery. To replace the typical RV storage battery, you'll need two of them--twice the footprint--to make one usable battery. The two batteries will need to be hooked up in series, that is, the negative terminal of one of them must be hooked to the positive terminal of its partner. Then the free terminals of the batteries--a positive and a negative--will be hooked to your RV battery leads.

Be sure to get MATCHING golf cart batteries, best new wherever possible. And remember, when you go to calculate your amp-hour capacity in this installation, the two batteries in series DO NOT add amp-hour capacity: Two matching golf cart batteries each with an 85 amp-hour capacity wired in series is still JUST an 85 amp-hour battery. And yes, you can parallel wire banks of series wired 6 volt batteries to increase your amp-hour capacity.

For more information and RV battery mysteries, check out our book, RV Boondocking Basics at the RVBookstore.