Up high on the list of RVers’ “awfulest” things to have happen on a trip,” is the failure of the “house” deep cycle battery. It does happen. It just happened to us.
On a run through eastern Arizona, we noticed we had almost no battery charge capacity. Run the lights for a couple of hours, go to bed, and next morning, zilch. Happily, our battery was still under warranty, and a quick stop Sam’s Club (where we’d bought the original) had us up and running again in a short time.
Not all deep cycle batteries come with the blessing of a warranty. In fact, most golf-cart batteries, at least the “inexpensive” ones, come with no warranty. In our case, we were running a “Marine/RV” battery, and in Sam’s case, a full one-year “no pro-rate” warranty applied.
This was not the first time we’d had to lug a bummed out battery back. The last time was a bit more complicated: The auto service department folks wanted to “make sure” the battery really wasn’t holding a charge, so they took it and stuck it on their charger. For several hours. Then they stuck it back on for yet another hour of cooking. Result? New battery required. Did we have the warranty paperwork? Actually, no. Fortunately, the battery was tagged with a date code that got us out of a squeak.
Lessons learned: If you can see your way clear, it’s best to keep a copy of the purchase receipt. And knowing how things like purchase receipts can vanish into the RV ether, make sure when you buy a new battery that the date stamp is clearly validated. On some batteries it’s a matter of having the seller poke out the “month and year” tab on the battery label; in other cases a “stick on” date code is stuck to the battery.
Speaking of date codes: Many battery manufacturers date stamp the manufacturing date into the case of the battery itself. A series of numbers, printed in the plastic is what you’re looking for. The first two characters, usually a letter followed by a number, tell the truth of the matter. Months are represented A-L (or sometimes M) for January through December–the letter I is sometimes omitted, hence the “M” for December for some. The single number represents the year. So a “C7″ battery would mean one built in March of 2007. Some manufacturers swap the year and the month code around, so this same battery date could appear as a “7C.”
Trojan batteries have the date codes stamped onto the terminals. The positive terminal shows the actual date of manufacture: Three characters, the first an alpha shows the month, and the last two digits the day of the month. On the negative terminal a two character code shows ship out date: The alpha letter shows month, and the single digit shows the year.
If the battery has been sitting on the dealer’s shelf for a long time, you might want to get a “fresher” one.
Purchasing a battery with a lot of exchange locations can also make life a lot smoother. Off-brands may be cheaper, but nationally branded batteries like Interstate can be a lot easier to get service on in backwater places where RV batteries–for some inexplicable reason–seem to die.
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