The Truth about using a
“Lawn Mower Battery” in a Power Wheel Vehicle
E-bay has numerous vendors selling instructions on how to
convert a Power Wheel to use a single 12 Volt battery. Heck, I even sell one in my Tech Topics
series. Unlike the rest, however, I
specifically recommend against using a $15 Walmart Garden Tractor battery. Not just because of the liquid acid inside
that could burn your child (or ruin his clothes) OR the real chance of a
battery explosion during recharging (among other safety problems), but because
it doesn’t make economic sense. To
understand why, you have to know a little about the different types of
Batteries.
$15 Walmart Garden Tractor batteries are known as SLI
batteries. This stands for Starting,
Lighting, Ignition. This type of
battery is commonly called a Starting Battery.
Starting batteries main purpose in life is to provide a lot of Amps for
a very short time. It IS NOT
designed to be discharged more than 3% of its capacity. Starting batteries are constructed with many
thin porous lead plates to ensure high amps for rapid discharges. If a starting battery is discharged more
than only 5% of its capacity, it’s life is severely shortened from sulfate build
up inside the battery. By shortened, I
mean REALLY shortened, like 30 - 50 cycles shortened (1
charge/discharge is a cycle). This is
exactly what you DON’T want in your power wheels vehicle. Ads that claim you can “Ride All Day” using
a Garden Tractor Battery, don’t tell you that you have only 29 more before the
battery is completely dead, with each riding session shorter than the last.
Power Wheel Vehicles require DEEP CYCLE batteries. These batteries are designed to be
discharged 20% - 50% of their capacity and then recharged hundreds, if not
thousands of times. Deep Cycle
Batteries are made with fewer, thicker and solid lead plates and produce much
less peak current over a longer period of time. A similar sized Deep Cycle battery will outlast an SLI battery in
Power Wheel usage anywhere from 2X to 10X and this is an Amps to
Amps comparison, taking into account the SLI battery could have 5 times the amp
hour rating of the deep cycle battery.
From an economic standpoint, a $15 Garden Tractor battery
makes no sense. Not when the equivalent
12 Volts in deep cycle batteries can be purchased for about $30 - $40, shipped
to your door off E-bay. I won’t even go
into the safety problems of using a garden tractor battery as those should be
obvious: (liquid acid, high amps, hydrogen explosion possibility, terminal
corrosion, etc.).
And before anyone accuses me of being in the pocket of Big
Battery, I’ve got no connection with any battery vendor. I’m just a parent of a kid who likes to
drive power wheels. You don’t have to
believe me, either. I recommend you do
an Internet search on the differences between Deep Cycle and SLI
batteries. You might even come to the
same conclusion I have.