Advice needed on what leisure battery to buy?
 

I just visited Torch for the first time last weekend and was lucky enough to be leant the use of some charging facilities by the very nice race organisers.

Now I know I'd like to race again at Torch I need to buy a leisure battery for charging my 7.4 stick lipos. I still need to learn about batteries and there seems to be quite a few to choose from. Can anybody please advise me on what spec of leisure battery I should be buying? :confused:

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
Jim

Hi Jim

I have found the easiest place to pick up a leisure battery is a caravan accessory shop. You can get them in Halfords, but seem a bit pricier, and there are loads of them on line with free delivery which is pretty good as they are quite heavy!!

Basically just need to make sure they are a deep cycle leisure battery and not a normal 12v car battery. My current leisure battery is a 80AH one and this has lasted for all day buggy events with both my and my sons lipos being charged off it. I think it was about £65 bought locally. Unless you are going to lots of 2 day outdoor race meetings where you will not get the chance to charge it overnight then I cannot see much point in a larger capacity one unless it is a really good price – just more expensive and bigger/heavier to carry. I suppose you could justify it on the basis that as the battery gets a bit older and loses some of its capacity, then a larger capacity one might carry on a bit longer??

You will need to get a charger which is designed for leisure/marine batteries and not one for normal 12v car batteries. Leisure batteries and 12V car batteries look very similar to me but understand that their charge/discharge characteristics mean they cannot be treated the same.

HTH

Rob

I use a 17ah gel cell battery which can be charged from my charger when I get home. It just about lasts a day of charging batteries but would recommend 24ah +

Towsure in southampton is the best place locally. I ended up buying a small generator instead as it wasn't much more expensive

Thanks for the advice
 

Thanks for all the advice on what battery to go for. I'll certainly be checking out the caravan shop and towsure for something suitable.:thumbsup:

Sadly I won't be able to make this Sunday's event but will look forward to racing again in a couple of weeks.

Cheers
Jim