Permobil Battery space for beach bum

[Bbqsteve]

I'm 60 yrs.old from Galveston TX. I live on the bay, only a few blocks from the beach. I have currently 2 permobil c300s as backups and the newer F3 corpus is my main chair, for a year now. All 3 have lifts. Bought eBay bargain brand gel 34 replacement batteries for 2 chairs the f3 and the best c300. Batteries lasted 3 months. Now I read your battery recommendation is AGM Odyssey or AGM Optima, group 34. My measurements for both show there's not enough height in either chair for those batteries due to the posts on top. The mk gel and the knockoffs I bought don't have the posts rather a bolt into the battery case. Any way around this space problem? Btw Burger man I'm in awe of your website and hope to fashion a beach sand capable chair to be able to actually walk the beach. Thanks for all the hard work and time sharing it.

[Burgerman]

How much actual height do you have?

Some advice...
1. cheap batteries are a total waste of money. If space is at a premium even worse! Because smaller batteries get a harder life. And die faster still. By cheap I mean anything NOT MK gel (not AGM!) or anything NOT Odyssey. Optima are good but lower capacity where space is at a premium.

2. gel batteries (MK, A500 Dryfit Sonnenschein and a couple of others) can offer 500 true cycles down to 80% depth of discharge. MUCH less if you discharge them more. And much less if you don't charge them correctly! And you probably do not! No mobility charger does. So you likely get 2 or 300 cycles at best if treated lightly.

Real answer?
Go lithium. That's not plug and play if you want it reliable and long range. It is if you don't!

If you must use lead, then charge often, and properly! That means no mobility charger, and for about 12 to 16 hours for gel at the correct voltages. And about 7 to 10 hours for odyssey, again at the correct voltage. These will give better performance but shorter life.