"Where's the beef?"


No I am not kidding. This photo reminds me of the Wendy's commercial from the early 80's with the little old lady asking "Where's the beef?" Laugh all you want but both of these batteries are sold & marketed as "Deep Cycle". The only ones laughing are the battery makers, all the way to the bank, with YOUR money. Which one would you rather lay your hard earned money down on....???? Which one do you suppose is really capable of deep cycling...?
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One glaring dissimilarity between these two batteries, besides the lack of lead on the 12V Group 24 pseudo deep cycle battery, is that this pseudo battery has very, very minimal room under the plates for any shed sulfate to collect. Also note how much battery case is wasted on-top of the plates.... Big box, hardly any lead while the golf cart battery is a taller box crammed chock full of lead. Both batteries take up virtually the same amount of floor space or foot print.


The big differences between the 12V deep cycle and the 6V deep cycle are more cycles, less cost per Ah, less cost per cycle and at the slight impact of a bit more height to fit the golf cart battery. If you have the height why would you use a more costly yet inferior product..?? Should a Yugo cost MORE than a Lexus? Would you pay MORE for a Yugo than you would for a Lexus? No, of course not, so why do that with marine batteries?


Plate Thickness:


6V GC2 235Ah = 3.07 mm (0.121") or just shy of 1/8"


Group 24 12V = 1.57 mm (0.0617") or just shy of 1/16"


Please remember the plate thickness of this group 24 "deep cycle" battery when you scroll down. This "sticker shop deep-cycle battery" has plates that are actually thinner than the starting battery pictured below and plate heights equivalent to the starting battery. Why? Because this is NOT A DEEP CYCLE BATTERY! The sticker is simply a lie....


NOTE: Used plates have a tendency to "swell" a bit beyond the as new factory specifications. The GC2 battery factory specification is 0.110 for the positive plate, a measured 0.011" variation from spec, and the Group 24 plate thickness is "unpublished", go figure.


You actually did read that correctly, the golf cart battery is almost double the positive plate thickness. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, this one might be worth 1500.... (wink)


As I say repeatedly to my customers and consults clients; "Deep cycle is often just a sticker, know what you are buying."....