Hi guys

I'm no expert on batteries, but I remember a long conversation (over a pint or two) with the South African fella that owns eazi awn.

He tried to explain to me why the use of deep cycle batteries in an overlanding application does not work (in his opinion).

The basis of his argument was that the normal stop start of daily travel does not provide the time necessary for an alternator to recharge a deep cycle battery.

Deep cycle batteries will of course tolerate being run flat and then recharged, however the time to recharge a deep cycle is much longer than the 8 or so hours of driving the next day.

My own experience with:

- a deep cycle battery/national lunar split charger/minus forty fridge -

did seem to confirm this.

It was ok for the first discharge, but thereafter it never seemed to recharge.

Other travelers with a similar system but with a 'normal' battery always seemed to have their fridges still running when my 110 amphour battery had packed up. - perhaps because their 'normal' battery recharged quicker??

It could well be that the addition of solar panels will provide the necessary extra support to prevent the deep cycle from discharging too much in the first place; and supply the extra recharging oomph (technical term) to bring the charge back up.

However, could it be argued that if you have sufficent solar panel wattage to run the toys, then a deep cycle is not necessary - you might just as well have an ordinary battery with the low voltage protection system that the national lunar split charger provides.

If the eazy awn guy is right - deep cycle is not the solution; better to find a balance between toys and solar panels.

As I said at the beginning I'm no expert - I might be talking crap

John