Because someone emailed me to ask about how I was getting along with having
330 AH golf cart wetcells paralleled with the red AGM starting batteries in
my stepvan's diesel V-8 I thought I'd answer to the newsgroup, too, with my
personal experience.

Since November of 2002, I have had two 6V 330AH golf cart batteries
powering my work bench and a 500W Tripplite inverter in my 1998 Union City
Body/Chevy stepvan. The van came with two paralleled AGM starting
batteries, brand new complements of the taxpayers from its former owner,
the USAF. To separate the batteries when the van is parked for long
periods, while allowing me to crank the diesel if these odd batteries
failed, I added a simple 350A single-pole on-off switch from Guest?...it's
a boat battery switch.

For a while, every time I started the truck, I'd switch the switch to on
after the truck started and switch the switch off when I stopped the truck
engine because of all the scaremongering about parallelling AGM and wet
batteries I'd read and heard from all over. After a while, after I'd
forgotten to switch the switch and nothing untoward happened (no blast,
fire, dead batteries, molten cabling, etc.) many times, I opened the switch
one day and put a DC ammeter across the switch so I could see all this
dastardly current that would flow from AGM super batteries to my trusty old
wetcells with the big, thick plates. Curiously, the ammeter read zero. I
couldn't get any cross-battery current until I got down to the 29.99
MILLIAMP range when I measured a tiny 18ma flowing from the nasty old golf
cart batteries actually CHARGING the supercells, against everything that's
Holy!

Well, the switch is ON, tonight, just like it is every night, now. Nothing
melted. All the batteries are still perfect. I'd switch it off if I were
going away for a few days to months, just for safety. But, against all the
hype and bull****, paralleled, they are just fine....(c;

Your reporter in the kevlar vest,
Larry

I have had two AGM starting batteries with four 6V Golf Cart wet cell Trojans
for a house bank for the last year. When charging, the are combined with a
Heart combiner. Since the nominal charging voltage is about the same, no one
could offer a reason not to do it.

So far, no problems.



"Larry W4CSC" wrote in message
...
Because someone emailed me to ask about how I was getting along with having
330 AH golf cart wetcells paralleled with the red AGM starting batteries in
my stepvan's diesel V-8 I thought I'd answer to the newsgroup, too, with my
personal experience.

Since November of 2002, I have had two 6V 330AH golf cart batteries
powering my work bench and a 500W Tripplite inverter in my 1998 Union City
Body/Chevy stepvan. The van came with two paralleled AGM starting
batteries, brand new complements of the taxpayers from its former owner,
the USAF. To separate the batteries when the van is parked for long
periods, while allowing me to crank the diesel if these odd batteries
failed, I added a simple 350A single-pole on-off switch from Guest?...it's
a boat battery switch.

For a while, every time I started the truck, I'd switch the switch to on
after the truck started and switch the switch off when I stopped the truck
engine because of all the scaremongering about parallelling AGM and wet
batteries I'd read and heard from all over. After a while, after I'd
forgotten to switch the switch and nothing untoward happened (no blast,
fire, dead batteries, molten cabling, etc.) many times, I opened the switch
one day and put a DC ammeter across the switch so I could see all this
dastardly current that would flow from AGM super batteries to my trusty old
wetcells with the big, thick plates. Curiously, the ammeter read zero. I
couldn't get any cross-battery current until I got down to the 29.99
MILLIAMP range when I measured a tiny 18ma flowing from the nasty old golf
cart batteries actually CHARGING the supercells, against everything that's
Holy!

Well, the switch is ON, tonight, just like it is every night, now. Nothing
melted. All the batteries are still perfect. I'd switch it off if I were
going away for a few days to months, just for safety. But, against all the
hype and bull****, paralleled, they are just fine....(c;

Your reporter in the kevlar vest,
Larry

Not sure where you got all the dire advise. The charging
regimine for wet cells and AGM are about the same. Putting
gels in the mix is not a good idea.

Doug
s/v Callista

"Larry W4CSC" wrote in message
...
Because someone emailed me to ask about how I was getting along with
having
330 AH golf cart wetcells paralleled with the red AGM starting batteries
in
my stepvan's diesel V-8 I thought I'd answer to the newsgroup, too, with
my
personal experience.

Since November of 2002, I have had two 6V 330AH golf cart batteries
powering my work bench and a 500W Tripplite inverter in my 1998 Union City
Body/Chevy stepvan. The van came with two paralleled AGM starting
batteries, brand new complements of the taxpayers from its former owner,
the USAF. To separate the batteries when the van is parked for long
periods, while allowing me to crank the diesel if these odd batteries
failed, I added a simple 350A single-pole on-off switch from Guest?...it's
a boat battery switch.

For a while, every time I started the truck, I'd switch the switch to on
after the truck started and switch the switch off when I stopped the truck
engine because of all the scaremongering about parallelling AGM and wet
batteries I'd read and heard from all over. After a while, after I'd
forgotten to switch the switch and nothing untoward happened (no blast,
fire, dead batteries, molten cabling, etc.) many times, I opened the
switch
one day and put a DC ammeter across the switch so I could see all this
dastardly current that would flow from AGM super batteries to my trusty
old
wetcells with the big, thick plates. Curiously, the ammeter read zero. I
couldn't get any cross-battery current until I got down to the 29.99
MILLIAMP range when I measured a tiny 18ma flowing from the nasty old golf
cart batteries actually CHARGING the supercells, against everything that's
Holy!

Well, the switch is ON, tonight, just like it is every night, now.
Nothing
melted. All the batteries are still perfect. I'd switch it off if I were
going away for a few days to months, just for safety. But, against all
the
hype and bull****, paralleled, they are just fine....(c;

Your reporter in the kevlar vest,
Larry

Doug Dotson wrote:
Not sure where you got all the dire advise. The charging
regimine for wet cells and AGM are about the same. Putting
gels in the mix is not a good idea.

Doug
s/v Callista

Sure, and what about the golf cart he stole from his wife? Surely she
deserves some sympathy, even from we non-golfers?


"Larry W4CSC" wrote in message
...
Because someone emailed me to ask about how I was getting along with
having 330 AH golf cart wetcells paralleled with the red AGM
starting batteries in my stepvan's diesel V-8 I thought I'd answer
to the newsgroup, too, with my personal experience.

Since November of 2002, I have had two 6V 330AH golf cart batteries
powering my work bench and a 500W Tripplite inverter in my 1998
Union City Body/Chevy stepvan. The van came with two paralleled AGM
starting batteries, brand new complements of the taxpayers from its
former owner, the USAF. To separate the batteries when the van is
parked for long periods, while allowing me to crank the diesel if
these odd batteries failed, I added a simple 350A single-pole on-off
switch from Guest?...it's a boat battery switch.

For a while, every time I started the truck, I'd switch the switch
to on after the truck started and switch the switch off when I
stopped the truck engine because of all the scaremongering about
parallelling AGM and wet batteries I'd read and heard from all over.
After a while, after I'd forgotten to switch the switch and nothing
untoward happened (no blast, fire, dead batteries, molten cabling,
etc.) many times, I opened the switch one day and put a DC ammeter
across the switch so I could see all this dastardly current that
would flow from AGM super batteries to my trusty old wetcells with
the big, thick plates. Curiously, the ammeter read zero. I
couldn't get any cross-battery current until I got down to the 29.99
MILLIAMP range when I measured a tiny 18ma flowing from the nasty
old golf cart batteries actually CHARGING the supercells, against
everything that's Holy!

Well, the switch is ON, tonight, just like it is every night, now.
Nothing melted. All the batteries are still perfect. I'd switch it
off if I were going away for a few days to months, just for safety.
But, against all the hype and bull****, paralleled, they are just
fine....(c;

Your reporter in the kevlar vest,
Larry

--
Remove "nospam" from return address.

"Dennis Pogson" wrote in
:

Sure, and what about the golf cart he stole from his wife? Surely she
deserves some sympathy, even from we non-golfers?


She found something she liked better in 1992. She already dumped him, too.

Sure hope THAT never happens again! Being single, again, is just too much
fun!

Larry W4CSC

Lead acid and AGM batteries have essentially the same cell voltage so there
won't be any catastophic type problems from hooking them in parallel.

The internal resistance of any two batteries can vary, even different sizes
of the same type of battery. This can lead to uneven charge/discharge
characteristics between two different size batteries hooked in parallel.

There is one situation where connecting AGM and lead acid together could be
a problem: many "smart" multi-cycle battery chargers have an optional
"equalizing" phase. This mode intentionally charges the battery above the
"gassing" point in an attempt to burn off sulphates on the plates, and thus
restore lost capacity. You don't want to do this to a lead acid battery too
often, but you NEVER want to do it to an AGM battery.

On my Heart Inverter this mode requires manual operation to start. Just make
sure that the AGM batteries are disconnected when (if) you this and you
shouldn't hurt them.



Rod