A starter battery for your car is just that. It is meant to start your car. People use them on accessory to run the radio but they are not the best deep cycle battery. Some starter batteries are like the Optima and can be used that way but they were so over kill that the manufacturer has watered them down to make more money. Here are the facts as I understand them. A healthy charged battery might be over 13vdc when fully charged. Keeping it that way in standby is 13.8. Full charging voltage is 14.4 to 15. Resting a battery is fully charged at 13 or more volts and as you use up a battery 12v would be dead. Now you can go further and drain a battery below 12v but it can ruin a battery. So for lead batteries the closer you keep them to 13vdc the better for the battery. Your voltage regulator makes these adjustments telling the alternator what to put out. An accurate multimeter lets you monitor this process. So when you go to your car in the morning to start and want to monitor the system before you start a healthy battery should be close to 13vdc. After starting it will be less but the voltage regulator will kick up to it's highest voltage for a while until the battery catches up. 14.4 to 15 volts. When the battery is fully charged the voltage regulator senses this and goes down to 13.8 or so. Could be less but if it falls much below 13vdc it could cause the battery to be under charged but this is tricky. If it is too high your battery can burn off electrolyte. Too low it will sulfate. Causing an early death. Just my two cents. That maintenance voltage is the real question. What should it be. Some say 12.3. I disagree. Some say 12.8 is good enough. Maybe. I say 13.3 is minimum. 13.8 keeps it real hot. But a voltage regulator doing it's job will take most of the load while driving keeping the battery perfectly topped up for the next start. You say what if I drive a block and the battery doesn't catch up. That is why it has extra capacity and you should own a battery charger. Just in case. Lawrence Rhodes.....
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