Demountable camper group

If you wild camp ever then IMHO go for the biggest that will fit.

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Modifications.
The camper had a tendency to slide forward . On th bottom of the camperr are some 100 X 50 batons . I have added some 30mm Box steel the locators to catch the last baton . I have also removed the two rubber buffers and replaced it with a piece of ply so that if for any reason it does creep forward and push on the bulk head it will spread the load .

Hi Jim.

Re. the battery question:

I wouldn't risk buying a 2nd leisure battery to mount in parallel with an existing one, unless that existing one is virtually brand new - I've never tried it but everything I have read says the old one will just pull the new one down causing it to fail prematurely. If you want two then buy them new at the same time.

When you start looking at leisure batteries it is interesting the number of discharges they admit to. Most people would expect to discharge a leisure battery to 50% of its capacity. But many I looked at could only accept doing that for a few dozen cycles at most before having to be thrown away.

AGM batteries are different. The cheaper ones maybe not, but the decent ones have graphs showing number of cycles versus the depth of discharge of each cycle. For instance my Rolls battery has a graph that implies around 700 cycles if discharging to 20% state of charge (don't try that on a regular flooded cell leisure battery). It will accept thousands of cycles if discharging down to 50% state of charge.

AGM batteries can also be mounted in any orientation, meaning depending upon the space available you might be able to fit a larger battery or more batteries by orienting them differently. But they do cost a lot more. My 105Ah Rolls was about £240.

However, I've only just switched to an AGM battery after years of buying cheap leisure batteries. So it will be interesting to see how well this battery works compared to the <£100 80Ah leisure battery it replaced. In theory, because I can discharge it much lower than the leisure battery, I can have double the usable amp-hours out of this new AGM for a battery only slight bigger in both stated capacity and physical size. We'll have to see how that works out over time.

Steve.

Thanks Steve for the battery info.
It's all very complicated . My old battery was fairly new ,something like 75ah . I ordered a new one of the same ah . I was quite surprised that when it came it was considerably smaller . I have fitted everything now and it all works , so I will see what happens .
Jim

Jim, just an addition to Steve's post about AGM batteries - they are fussy about how they are charged and require a different charging process than the more common lead acid ones. If you are ever tempted to consider buying AGM (and as Steve says they do have advantages) you need to check first that your camper's charger has an AGM mode. If not you need to bear in mind the cost of upgrading the charger as well.