Trojan vs US Battery

[kernal]

On their web site they list 4 manufacturing facilities, 2 in California and 2 in Georgia.

[gadavis]

Trojan makes some parts of their batteries in Sandersville. Ga. That is 12 miles from my house.

[cartboy]

Originally Posted by TahoeDawgZ71

US Batteries leak.

So, why did Club Car sue Trojan and why did EZ Go switch to US Battery?

http://www.buggiesgonewild.com/elect...good-used.html

[TahoeDawgZ71]

Originally Posted by cartboy

So, why did Club Car sue Trojan and why did EZ Go switch to US Battery?

http://www.buggiesgonewild.com/elect...good-used.html

I would imagine it had something to do with the poor performance of the T-1275. They didn't work out well as we all know. They no longer use them. I've seen numerous DS cars and LSVs with US Batteries that had the battery racks completely destroyed from acid spillage. It's not from over filling. These cars have single point watering systems that turn off when the water is filled to the optimum level. I can't speak for EZGO. I have no idea what they're smoking on the other side of town, but they can keep it over there.

[reeseman44]

I'm researching trojan vs us, and I found this post that's contrasting you opinion on this very topic two years ago. I know your a long time here tahoe, so I was trusting what you said til a saw your two posts are wildly different on this topic. Which one is is....


04-01-2012, 11:07 AM #5
TahoeDawgZ71
Dawg Gone Wild
Location: Golf Car Capital of The World... Augusta, Georgia
Posts: 8,002
Default Re: Trojan batteries -VS- US battery
In my opinion, the 12V US battery is better than Trojan. In anything else such as an 8 or a 6 they seem to be about the same as far as dependability and longevity. I agree with ScottyB, the US battery is definitely more battery for the buck.

[yawood]

Originally Posted by reeseman44

I'm researching trojan vs us, and I found this post that's contrasting you opinion on this very topic two years ago. I know your a long time here tahoe, so I was trusting what you said til a saw your two posts are wildly different on this topic. Which one is is....


04-01-2012, 11:07 AM #5
TahoeDawgZ71
Dawg Gone Wild
Location: Golf Car Capital of The World... Augusta, Georgia
Posts: 8,002
Default Re: Trojan batteries -VS- US battery
In my opinion, the 12V US battery is better than Trojan. In anything else such as an 8 or a 6 they seem to be about the same as far as dependability and longevity. I agree with ScottyB, the US battery is definitely more battery for the buck.

TahoeDawgZ71 said as much in his post above...

Originally Posted by TahoeDawgZ71

I would imagine it had something to do with the poor performance of the T-1275. They didn't work out well as we all know. They no longer use them.

In both posts he said that the 12V Trojan battery had not lived up to expectation.

[TahoeDawgZ71]

It's pretty simple really, in the post from 2012 I had not seen near the amount of US batteries in Club Cars that I had seen by 2014. 90% of the time I saw them, they were 6 volts. 6 Volts aren't the ones with the issues. It's the 8 Volts. On the rare occasion I'd see a set of US Battery 8 volts in a Club Car, they were wet. The racks were corroded and it was a huge mess but I just wrote it off and blamed it on overfilling. By 2014 I'd had enough. I was in charge of several operations at the dealership where we went and changed out several sets of US Batteries because they had made such a mess on the floors of cart storage areas at golf courses. I probably wrote that post after work one day when I had been changing batteries all day and I was probably pissed off. With all that being said, and hopefully clarified, let me give you my 2017 opinion, as a self employed business owner vs somebody who felt like a prisoner every day I went to work and hated life.....

I think the 6 Volt, 8 Volt, and 12 Volt US battery are all a good unit, as long as you've got the correct charging system. I don't think Club Car ever really figured out the correct algorithm to put into their OBC to allow the US Battery to charge correctly. We never saw this problem out of 6 volts in DS cars or 12 Volts in DS or Precedent cars. If I were putting batteries in a golf cart today and I had to choose from US Battery or Trojan at the same price I'd pick Trojan, unless I was buying 12 Volts. As I mentioned before, I think the 12 Volt US Battery is a better battery than the Trojan T-1275. I still stand true to that. I'll never recommend putting 8 volt US batteries in a Club Car with an OBC. I've seen far too many instances where it just doesn't work. Since I've been self employed I'd worked on quite a few E-Z-Go cars, some of them have been TXT48 cars with 8 Volt US batteries in them. Never seen an issue there. I believe the reason for this is due to the high frequency charger that they're using vs the OBC in the leaky Club Cars. I also believe that you could put US Battery 8 volts in a new Precedent with the ERIC charging system and never have an issue. The software of the OBC was written many years ago, in 1995, with a Trojan Algorithm. They changed it several times over the years and never got it 100% correct. With the introduction of US Batteries in fleet cars, a new OBC was released with a green sticker on it to indicate Algorithm #2 for US Batteries. They didn't work like they should have. I believe this has something to do with the fact that they didn't have 15-20 years to tweak their software like they did for the Trojans. By the time they discontinued the OBC, I think the Trojan Algorithm was fairly good, but still left a bit to be desired when it came to fully charging a battery pack and getting the most out of your batteries. I know you're probably thinking it's strange that the 12 Volt US Batteries didn't leak when charging in a Club Car with an OBC. You're not alone. I've often wondered the same thing. But they're a good battery for that application. I'm not knocking the battery, it's a compatibility issue in certain applications. That is all. The OBC was a great idea and it worked well for what it was intended to do. I know people on the forum bash it all the time because of the so-called "high failure" rate which is simply not true. People are quick to point their finger at the OBC when they are having an issue with their cart because they don't understand it and don't know what it does. Since I've started my own business in 2015 (March), I've only changed maybe 2 or 3 On-Board computers because they simply did not work. With that being said, I do think it is a thing of the past and it was time to eliminate it. When the OBC was first introduced in 1995 on the first DS Series 48 volt car it was a big deal to the dealers because of the huge amount of information that it stored. You've got to realize that the controllers on these cars were simple series controllers that were not capable of storing any information. They weren't "intelligent" per say. They simply read a throttle signal and regulated the power that passed through them based on the throttle reading. The controller did the same task whether it was in Forward or Reverse. It knew no different. The OBC is where all of the good information was stored. This information could be accessed by the use of a CDM (Communication Display Module). The early OBCs had a sensor inside them that would send a signal to the CDM if you got it close enough. The CDM would then provide the information about that particular vehicle for the dealer to analyze. It would tell you how many "Energy Units" had been removed from the pack in the life of the car. It would tell you how many "Energy Units" had been removed from the pack since the last charge cycle, and it would tell you how the last charge cycle ended, whether it be normal, incomplete, max timer, or DVDT which was a backup charge mode that the OBC would use to charge batteries that would not want to charge properly. Club Car was way above the curve with the OBC when it came out simply because you could gather information about each individual cart. It saved them tons of money too. If a golf course had poor fleet rotation, they could identify that by checking the total "Energy Units Removed" of each individual car. At 20,000 Energy Units, the battery warranty is void. If a golf course has a fleet of cars that are only a year old and they're screaming that they've got bad batteries this would tell them why. Poor rotation was very common. More often than not, the carts that were closest to the exit door are the ones that got the most usage, and the ones that needed batteries first. We'd see 28,000 energy units on cart #1 and 7,000 energy units on cart #65. It would make a perfect pattern. There was absolutely no way an E-Z-Go dealer could gather that sort of information about their vehicles. Yes, they could have incorporated some sort of module into their charger circuit boards to tell you that information. But how would they know that they consistently charged the same cart with the same charger every single night? Simple answer, they wouldn't. With the introduction of these Sepex systems with intelligent programmable controllers, they could finally ditch the OBC. The new white Excel controllers that are used with the ERIC cars (2014 and up) now record all of that same information as the OBC, plus a lot more. It is accessible via the IQDM (Curtis handheld scan tool). Different battery charge algorithms are programmed into the controller and can be changed by the push of a button on the handheld. It's so simple, and it simplifies the vehicle because there is no OBC.

I hope this information helps. Please feel free to ask my opinion anytime you want advice. I'd be more than happy to give you the best answer I can give you based on my experience. But please, don't fuss at me for something I said 5 years ago without knowing that I truly had a reason for fussing and contradicting something I said 2 years prior. I had a reason, I just didn't know what that reason was at the time.

[Swan]

great explanation, are your fingers sore?

[reeseman44]

I asked you to clarify your two contrasting posts because I've seen your very knowledgeable and wanted your opinion. I'm about to put batteries in my 2010 precedent, and a local dealer has the 170ah US 8v batteries for $600 out the door , I thought that was a great deal. I sincerely mean it when i say i appreciate that explanation. I didn't mean it as fussing, im just kinda straight up sometimes and dont sugar coat sh*t. Lol. :)

[TahoeDawgZ71]

Originally Posted by Swan

great explanation, are your fingers sore?

Yes they were. I had to get out of bed for this one. No way was I typing all that on my phone.