Foretravel Owners' Forum

I've been researching batteries for the last 2 days and reading reviews and I'm getting burned out.  I was considering purchasing the Alliance Group 31 925 CCA  batteries at Freightliner, but I would have to modify my battery box and Freightliner will not take my group 34 batteries on a core.

So after looking at group 34 batteries I narrowed it down to the Odyssey Batteries Extreme Series, Group 34 850 CCA.  This battery is made and the USA and had a lot of great reviews.  They are a little more expensive than the Optima Red Tops with more CCA.  I was considering the Optima Battery but I was running into a lot of bad reviews.  I also thought about getting them at COSTCO for their return policy but they do not carry them any longer.  They only deal in Interstate.

Anyone here ever had the Odyssey batteries?

John M.

Have been using 2 Optima red tops for start batteries for 2 years,no problems,got them on Amazon prime.

According to odyssey's website the extreme design function is to provide the CCA needed AND be a deep cycle battery capable of 400 cycles at 80% discharge.

Probably why the red tops have printed on the top of them "starting batteries" no reference to deep cycling.

My red tops died after 3 1/2 years. 

Not a fair comparison or post of results because I left the headlights on for days and ran the red tops batteries totally dead.

Then I did not know that my crossover charger blew it fuse as the load to,recharge the spiral wound's exceeded its built in 30 amp fuzing so they were slowly being drawn down and only charged when driving.  Or boost switch on which I rarely if ever used.

Changed the boost switch solenoid to a combiner instead.  If either battery bank is receiving a charge of 13.6 volts or more the combiner puts them together.

At the point of a  discharge the combiner separates the banks.

My small solar panel puts out enough watts and volts to cause the combiner to click the banks together.  I hear it work.

Replaced all three red tops last month.  O,Reilly gave me a discount and the price was $758 for three with a $14? $18 credit back for the cores.

Being as I did not hopefully need the deep discharge cycling part of the extreme i rebought the red tops.

Average life here of the red tops exceeds 10 years.

My m11 requires 2200 amps of starting CCA so the 2,400 is more than adequate as we do not have a lot of parasitic draws on the engine side of the system.

If your use does involve larger draws on the engine batteries then  150 extra CCA's and the ability to be able to draw them down a bit without damage may sway your choice.

My guru buddy said my combiner changing both the AGM spiral wound red tops and my mk gels would cause no issues which matches that Foretravel fitted both banks the same way new from them

As Wolfe mentioned here a while ago I intentionally set my non smart alternator and solar panels to charge at max 13.6 volts to not cook the batteries from long alternator drives or from solar input.

The magnum charger is a smart charger and adjusts its charge rate automatically.

The mk gels can theoretically charge at 14.15 volts and the magnums indicator panel shows 14.05 or so at bulk charging times.  The length of the wiring runs and the wiring to the control panel may be the difference I see displayed.

I have not bothered to check the charge voltage at the batteries themselves so far but I feel it's a moot point.

Lowered charging voltages for long runs can have the batteries lose some capacity I understand so an occasional 1/20C slow charge with my craftsman die hard smart charger might restore any future loss of capacity detection. 

Almost for sure overthinking this BUT there are a lot of very knowledgeable owners here

I have used the odyessey  battery in my sand cars... I have always had good luck with them.. My friend not so much.. I had 2 sandcars and both had them and I was happy.. 5 yrs total between both..

John, the Odyssey are a top battery and in BC Canada all the Buses (transit) use them and my Brother Geoff has 2 in his GV for coach power. They can be positioned any way but upside down and they have sustained some deep draw downs and can be recharged without a loss of life. A friend of his sells them so gave geoff 2 to test in RV.
JohnH

Odyssey Is a data center/telecom quality battery. Much better than anything youll find on the shelf. I think you would be very happy with the performance of them.

I think the OP is asking which odyssey not if.  Two models spiral or having deep cycle capabilities.  Buses may draw the batteries down more?  Lots of lights and fans on a bus.  I doubt if they have two battery banks

Odyssey only makes one style, and it is far superior to optima on paper. In real life, i think its probably better but I  have no proof. The optima has spiral cells. The odyssey is square and uses 100% of that area for the plates, no wasted space between the circular cells.

As my brother John has written I have two Odyssey Extremes  as coach batteries, 31-PC2150, I do not boondock so I cannot give any performance criteria.
I am still running the  two red Tops for starting batteries that came with the GV when I purchased it from PO, the Red tops  are nearing their end of life as they are over 7 years old but have not let me down to date.
 

Geoff,

Thanks for the cool photos of your battery mounting.  Although I know (in my head) that AGM batteries can be mounted in any orientation, the thought of batteries being mounted sideways or (even more scary) upside-down just feels wrong.  It's nice to see evidence that it actually works.  Has got me thinking about a way to add a third AGM8D battery to our coach.

Geoffh,

A good idea to slightly change wiring.  You have both positive and ground to coach coming off the same battery.

That left battery does most of the "heavy lifting", with the right battery mostly along for the ride.

Suggest moving either house positive or ground to the other battery so that they "share the load".

The more I search the Optima reviews, the more negative comments I find.  Still searching other options.  Thank you all for your input.
John M.

Put in Red Tops to replace same in 2010. Replaced them in 2017 with whatever Sam's Club had at the time. Happy so far. Coach starts. Was happy with the Red Tops but Sam's didn't sell them any longer.

Hi Brett,
 Your  assessment of cable set up also caught my Brothers eye,  he changed them soon after when  we went to visit him and his pit.
 I added some clear sheeting to keep dirt off and because of the vertical position of the cable lugs I screwed in a SS screw into the post ( the extreme batteries come with 3/8" screw posts and I screwed the lead posts on  ).

The optimas have a 81% five star rating on Amazon.com  out of 486 reviews