US Battery vs Trojan

[Brad Wilf]

Will be upgrade my batteries, looking for feedback from those who have been using either brand for some time. How deep to you draw, what is your “normal” usage, how long have you had them. I had 2 gc2 from Canadian battery ( don’t know who actually made them) for 4 years in my TC they worked great. My local parts store I get pretty deep discounts, they carry US battery and also the Canadian battery, I haven’t priced any out as of yet.

Looking for real feedback on US or Trojans.. I know Trojans are kinda the go to..and set the bar.

Any info appreciated.

[aeblank]

Can't go wrong with either. I ended up with us batteries, cause the forklift place nearest me couldn't get Trojans anymore. My dad has Trojans and has beat the tar out of them.... Mine lasted like 5 days with a CPAP nightly and a minute or two of microwave daily, and lights, water pump and TV. Nearly non existent solar.

Obligatory pics...

https://i.imgur.com/0jyBZxa.jpg?1

https://i.imgur.com/fmWslIS.jpg?1

[HR2004]

we have had trojan batteries for at least 7 years in our coach.. the other day I noticed the electric flusher on mid toilet was slower moving.. checked the voltage at the panel and was 13.1.. disconnected all 4 batteries, load tested them, they were still in the good range. cleaned all cables and posts. found one cable coming from the inverter that was corroded on the bottom side.. put it all back together and had 13.45 volts and toilet was working properly again. So I give a good vote for Trojan.

[Brad Wilf]

Nice! That’s the stuff I want to hear. Keep them coming.

HR2004: to my neighbour to the south THANK YOU for your service.

[BMGM37]

I grew up with my dad always using Trojans (batteries that is) so that is what I have always used. When we bought our 2018 Seneca, it came with 12 volts but I immediately wanted to swap out to 6 volts, and both kids had trailers that we used the 12 volts to upgrade them. I have never had any problems from Trojans but looked into US and after lots of reading, stuck with Trojan, the set in our last motorhome were still going strong at 7 years old and friends that bought our old motorhome say they are still going..so that’s 9 years. Keeping batteries working mean keeping water in them and desulification is what makes the last so I highly recommend a ProFill system on any battery bank. Here is what made me stick with Trojan...

https://www.trojanbattery.com/pdf/Th...%20Battery.pdf

[ttavasc]

If you can find them, the Canadian-made Rolls batteries are very high quality. The Rolls S6 GC2-HC (230ah) have upwards of ~1450-1475 discharge cycles at 50%. I went with a pair of Trojan T-125's (240ah) as they were the ones that were readily available locally. They are slightly lower on the discharge cycles at ~1150 at 50% discharge, but they are a solid and reliable battery and given our current usage that will still get us quite a few years of service. I was not convinced the US battery equivalent to the Trojan T-125 was on par with the Trojan and after reading the attachment BMGM37 posted looks like that may be true.

[txcpl]

My experience with and without Trojans is that a good quality battery will cost about the same, when you take a look at cost per year of service.

[brulaz]

We have 2 US Battery GC2s (~6 yrs old) and 2 Duracell GC2s (~5 yrs old). Got those two brands because they were readily available and good Ah "bang for the buck". All seem to be doing well so far.

Our solar chargers are battery temperature compensated and always on. Every day the solar tries to get the batts up to the absorb voltage and hold them there for 2 hours or until the current drops to a specified minimum (I forget the #).

Originally I equalized every year, but later only did it if the cell sp.gr. difference in each 12V bank is 0.015 or more (read that in the Trojan manual?).

With all our solar, we rarely (never?) have had to draw them down below 50%. (But I wouldn't hesitate to do so, even down to 30%, if necessary).

Not sure how long these will last, but so far I've been happy with both of them. And can't say how well they would do if we used them more and/or treated them worse.

[Mark_K5LXP]

I had a side-by-side experience with both. The answer of which is "better" depends on your definition of "better". The USB's I tried were maybe 25-30% cheaper, and lasted maybe 25-30% less in this application. It turned out too that their charge profile was a bit different (Trojan has tweaked theirs as well over time) so to have a true apples-apples comparison one would really need to fine tune that. Compared to both interstate and USB the Trojans I've had just plain worked better in terms of raw amp delivery and coming back for more. But you pay a premium for that, so I would say it depends a lot on your application. Knowing what I know I still bought interstates for the RV because that application is pretty tepid. Only occasional deep discharges and rarely more than a few dozen amps. Just about any battery will put up with that so I couldn't see spending more for a premium battery. But if your application puts the hurt to the batteries in terms of draw or depth like a kilowatt plus inverter, battery selection matters a lot. Some of the folklore out there is USB is "just as good" as Trojan but you couldn't prove that by me. They're "decent" but not the same. Ya get what ya pay for.

Mark B.
Albuquerque, NM

[Mordecai]

I have used a USB 12v 155 amp/hr for 4 seasons now-maybe 250 nights of Boondocking and never discharging below 60%. I would say it’s been a good battery. One reason is I have hit it with some pretty high charging voltages to shorten generator run time and it hasn’t skipped a beat. It took about 50 charging cycles for the specific gravity to settle down and be predictably consistent. I recently got lithium so it will be relegated to standby sump pump duty in the basement to live out the rest of it’s middle age.

[Brad Wilf]

Thank you for all your well detailed and written replies. Appreciate it, I have some more thinking and research do to, you guys have hit some really good points. Gotta love amazon prime, ordered my blue sea disconnect yesterday received it today before lunch.