Trojan T-105 or Interstate again?

[Gary RVRoamer]

Trojan does indeed make an excellent battery, whether you choose the flooded cell or AGM variety.

Interstate doesn't make batteries at all - they are a private label distributor. Last I knew, Interstate 6v GC2 batteries came from US Battery, who also has a solid rep for their 6v type.


6v GC2 (golf car) flooded-cell batteries are pretty much a commodity and can be bought on the basis of $/amp-hour. If I could get Trojans for near the same price as the Interstates, I'd go with them. My personal experience with Trojan 12v AGMs has been excellent, but I wouldn't pay a hefty premium for them. I've also had excellent results with Lifeline (aka Concorde).



In my opinion, the useful life of a deep cycle battery will depend more on how you treat it than the brand. You got 6 years from your last interstates, so you are not abusing them. Maybe the Trojans would get you a year more with the same care, but maybe not. There is no magic with lead-acid battery chemistry - all the major manufacturers are 99% the same. The top brands have better cases and more robust plates and posts, but that doesn't always make much difference at all.

[Big Oil Guy]

Interstates are now made by Johnson Controls, who also makes the batteries for WalMart and AutoZone.

My last Interstates (6 years) were kept at full charge while the RV was in storage, which is about 9 months of the year. I installed 300w of solar with a Morningstar Sunsaver Duo controller 10 years ago and couldn't be happier with it. This nifty little controller keeps both banks of batteries at 100% with a state-of-the-art 4 stage charging system, and this is largely what I attribute the longevity of the batteries.

With the last set of Interstates, I put 4 oz of mineral oil into each cell when they were installed. This is the amount that they were low coming from the factory so there was no need to remove any electrolyte. It indeed did substantially cut down on water usage and corrosion compared to what was experienced prior to using the mineral oil. I never let them get below 50% (12.0-12.1v) when dry camping, which is 90% of the camping that I do.

Some people think it's crazy to put mineral oil in the cells. That's fine, those folks can continue to deal with that green corrosion, eaten up connections, having an excess mess to clean up, and cells getting too low on water requiring premature replacement, or going to AGM's. They're still flooded batteries and require water at least once a year, and corrosion isn't non-existent, but corrosion and maintenance is minimal! I just think of it as "AGM Lite".

[Rob Harkins]

Big Oil Guy that's very interesting.

[Rob Harkins]

Originally Posted by Gary RVRoamer

Trojan does indeed make an excellent battery, whether you choose the flooded cell or AGM variety.

Interstate doesn't make batteries at all - they are a private label distributor. Last I knew, Interstate 6v GC2 batteries came from US Battery, who also has a solid rep for their 6v type.


6v GC2 (golf car) flooded-cell batteries are pretty much a commodity and can be bought on the basis of $/amp-hour. If I could get Trojans for near the same price as the Interstates, I'd go with them. My personal experience with Trojan 12v AGMs has been excellent, but I wouldn't pay a hefty premium for them. I've also had excellent results with Lifeline (aka Concorde).



In my opinion, the useful life of a deep cycle battery will depend more on how you treat it than the brand. You got 6 years from your last interstates, so you are not abusing them. Maybe the Trojans would get you a year more with the same care, but maybe not. There is no magic with lead-acid battery chemistry - all the major manufacturers are 99% the same. The top brands have better cases and more robust plates and posts, but that doesn't always make much difference at all.

To be honest the Interstate batteries we have are still working fine but at reduced capacity, but when dry camping we can only get one night with them and then need to run the generator the next morning. As our first trip is coming up on the May long weekend will be for dry camping for 4 days I figure it is time to replace them anyway. That's if we get to go as we are in lockdown still in our province. If we only camped with full hook-ups I probably would run them one more season. Thanks for the input Gary.

[Gary RVRoamer]

Interstates are now made by Johnson Controls, who also makes the batteries for WalMart and AutoZone.

I doubt if there is a single source of supply for the entire Interstate brand. They used to get their 6V GC2 models from US Battery (who specializes in those) but many of the others came from either East Penn or Exide. The supplier contracts change from time to time and Johnson Controls is currently the major supplier to Interstate, at least for the automotive batteries, but probably not the only supplier. Walmart used Exide to produce their Maxxstart brand for years, but I hear Johnson has taken over much of that as well. Next year it might change again.


The point is that when you buy Interstate, you are buying the same battery offered by many other brands. The 4 big US battery makers offer a couple price and quality tiers for their customers to choose from, but generally batteries with the same specs (AH/RC, CCA, and BCI case size) will be essentially identical. Warranty, MSRP, etc. is set by the selling brand and may differ, but the physical product is the same.

Each manufacturer also has their own in-house brand, e.g. Delco for Johnson Controls and Deka for East Penn. Exide and US Battery use their corporate name for their battery brand as well. Trojan sells under the Trojan, Trillium, Reliant and Ranger brand names and Concorde sells under the Concorde and Lifeline brand names.

[AKOne]

Good information Gary, thank you!

[Big Oil Guy]

I just got on the Costco website and read up on the deep cycle 6v Interstates. They are up to $99 now and the reviews are miserable. The ones selling now are giving out in <1 to 2-3 years. It could be as simple as Interstate using a different supplier in this time period and the quality taking a hit.

I didn't read any reviews on the set I put in my MH a year ago due to good performance on the last set. Now I wish I'd sprung for the Trojans! Will be interesting to see how long I get out of this latest set.

[POPPASMURF]

Something I stumbled across, a local independent auto parts supplier sells Magnum batteries. When I told him I wanted deep cycle for a motor home-he showed me the top of the battery and there was the name Trojan imprinted. I ended up buying 3 size 27 12 volts as that is as many I could fit. Price was good using our Canadian pesos.

[Mark_K5LXP]

I'll disagree here a bit with one of Gary's points, batteries are not 99% the same. Maybe among common sources of house brand commodity units where the only thing that changes is the label on the side and price/prorated "warranty" but if they truly were all the same there wouldn't be a market for premium product like Trojan, Rolls, etc.

In my own experience under severe operating conditions Interstate and USB models did not last as long as Trojan. To be fair, they're not as expensive either. That being said, in a tepid application like many RV's I think even baseline GC-2's will offer good service for the money. I'm running Costco GC-2's in my class A, currently 2 years old. Capacity tested last month to 103% and I have yet to add water to them since new. Granted I manually control the charge profile and stay on top of things but it's implied that when properly fed even "budget" GC-2's can perform very adequately in intermittent boondocking service. If I had a heavy draw inverter or was cycling deeply frequently I'd probably be singing a different tune but a premium battery would not perform any better for my current application. You do get something for your money when you buy premium batteries, the decision to make is whether those attributes will be an advantage for you.

Mark B.
Albuquerque, NM

[Rob Harkins]

Thanks for all the feedback guys, installed the Trojans at home this weekend. Hopefully they do the job as well or better than the old Interstates.

[Gary RVRoamer]

I'll disagree here a bit with one of Gary's points, batteries are not 99% the same. Maybe among common sources of house brand commodity units where the only thing that changes is the label on the side and price/prorated "warranty" but if they truly were all the same there wouldn't be a market for premium product like Trojan, Rolls, etc.

LOL, Mark. We aren't really disagreeing at all. In fact I said originally that I would buy the Trojans as long as the price premium wasn't too high. And I have done so myself, purchasing both Trojan and Lifeline brands in the past when the price was right


We both seem to agree that many Rvs and many Rvers won't see much difference in performance and that was my primary point..

[Milford 47]

The huge difference for me was we travel in spurts so to speak. The MH will set for a few weeks and I really don't like to have to leave it plugged in. The other item was the over nights with hydronic heat and fridge plus coffee before 7 am generator time in many parks. The OEM or Sam's equivalent GC2 will always loose voltage and never have the capacity to still have enough reserve to make coffee. However they typically last me about 4 years.

The aggravation of dead batteries and the corrosion plus no coffee makes the Trojan T105 AGM not only nice but a must have. Just depends on what you think your needs are. Not dealing with water and corrosion is a huge factor for me. Every vehicle that has a gasoline or diesel engine I own has AGM batteries for the same reasons.

For me life is to short to clean up battery bays and charge batteries.

[Winemaker2]

Originally Posted by Rob Harkins

Thanks for all the feedback guys, installed the Trojans at home this weekend. Hopefully they do the job as well or better than the old Interstates.

Nice!
Only suggestion would be to coat those Cu ring terminals w batty spray or grease.
Untinned Cu will corrode faster than tinned and protection will help.

[Machine99]

Where is a good place to purchase the Trojans?