I am at the end of life for my 8x6 configuration. Got five years out of them in a hot climate, so I can't be too upset. However, I now am on the fence about replacing with lead acid or upgrade to lithium. Searching through all the posts her don't offer a lot of success for one particular brand or configuration, so I thought I'd throw it out there:
What did you use? What kind of charger? Where did you get them? What kinds of performance/range upgrades did you get? What did it cost?
Seems there are about 20x the options that there are for lead acid. I'm looking at a few of them:
http://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/262456733560
http://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/182399970418
http://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/262444029084
I have some other questions, too.
Why couldn't I use a standard charger if there is balancing built into the battery? Isn't it just a matter of applying voltage to the pack to bring it to the voltage supplied?
It seems that the amperage per hour is so low. With lead acid t-105's I would be at 1800 ah, but with any of these solutions it is in the 50ah range.
Price/performance what is the best bet?
I don't want to break the bank on this but I understand I could get significantly longer life, better performance, no fumes, no sulfurization, lighter, and faster charging. Seems like prices have become much better and realistic now that there are more cars using them, but it also seems that the market is devoid of any ready made and packaged solution.