John MacDougall, Annie Laurie, #26
After 6 years of daily use, and 6 months of my brother's neglecting them (not checking or adding water…resulting in dry plates), my three old Rolls/Surrettes 8Ds were still going strong, but had lost some of their capacity…
So, after remembering what one other C470 owner related to me many years ago, I thought why not see if I also could make some big 2-volt cells work…
I knew I could alreday get my current 825 A/H battery bank in there…but could I really fit a 1125 A/H battery bank in the same space???? The answer is yes!!!! (although I did need to slightly move just the top edge of the aft end of the box aftward, approx. 1/2", as my c470 battery boxes are not completely "square and true", but rather are a bit of a "parallelagram"…)
Rolls/Surrettes makes some pretty big batteries, but these 375 A/H "8D-sized" batteries are "designed" to fit into an area which holds 8Ds…but inside their USCG-approved-inspected boxes, they're a bit too big to fit into our C470's battery boxes…so they must be fit in individually, and you'll use the C470's battery boxes (with some starboard/wood spacers) as the battery's boxes…
These are Rolls/Surrettes 12-EHG-375PM's…rated at 375 A/H each (at the normal "20-hr rate")… See here for details… http://www.rollsbattery.com/pdf/12EHG375P.pdf
I fit three of these batteries into my C470…actually I fit 18 of their individual cells…3 groups of six 2-volt cells… This gives me a house battery bank of 1125 A/H, in the same space as the original three 8D's (with a little room to spare), and without necessitating removing anything else from the boat, nor loosing any water capacity, nor storage…
Please undertand that I do not "need" this much battery capacity…but since I have the space, made the decision to change batteries before my old ones died, and wanted the ease of installing batteries/cells that weight only 35 lbs each (times 18 cells)…the decision was easy…
Here are a few photos of the result (prior to my installing wooden hold-down bars)… Enjoy…
John, "Annie Laurie", #26
(Click on picture for full size)
