Friday, September 26, 2008

Batteries are Here!

I can't believe it! I ordered the batteries on Monday and the delivery guy showed up on Wednesday! I wasn't here, but he came back on Thursday and dropped off the LifeLine group-31 batteries.


Here's the delivery truck with the liftgate.


The battery packaging came in very good condition on a pallet. I didn't have enough space in my 1-car garage to store it, so I removed all the packaging and stored the batteries in their cardboard boxes under the rear of the Civic.


Here's what one battery looks like. I like the Lifeline GPL-31T (now GPL-31MT) because it has a good number of amp-hours for the size (105 Ahr) and has brass terminals with brass bolts to help prevent corrosion. The Peukert factor (1.106) is much lower than similar batteries. The specified cycle life is longer too. These cost a bit more than Optima group-31 batteries, but less than the Odyssey PC2150, so I'll give it a shot.


Here's one of the batteries sitting in the rear trunk battery rack. I still need to add a plywood board to even out the weight distribution, but it looks like they fit well. I'll have to cut notches out of the battery hold-down bars to accomodate the geometry of the battery, but I think it will work out.

2 comments:

Too Many Parts said...

Tim,

Am I correct in thinking that these batteries you ultimately chose are not included in your handy battery comparison worksheet? Do you think, when you get the time, you could add their specifications to the Excel file for posterity?

Thanks,

Jesse.

TimK said...

Hi Jesse,

If you look at the files section in the Civic-EV-Kit Google Group under BatteryAnalysis.xls, the Concorde GPL-31T battery should be listed as the last one. The product is "Lifeline" but the manufacturer is Concorde.

Tim