Seeking recommendations for electric wheelchair batteries

[Windmaker]

About a year ago I had the good fortune to have someone gift me with a decent quality electric wheelchair (Quickee G424), albeit 10 years old or so. It had spent most of it's existence stored and with very little use, and in fact the last set of replacement batteries had been allowed to set uncharged for a very long period. When I renewed charging them they didn't last very long at all...no doubt heavily sulfated. While I am not in a position to need this chair day in and day out just yet, it certainly won't be too far in the future, but for the time being I will only use it occasionally.

My question is, does anyone have any recommendations for the best quality brands a/o type of battery given my current limited use needs. The original and replacement batteries were 12v 55ah SLA's, but perhaps gels would be the better choice when I start using this unit every day. The prices I've found on the web range from about $200 to $450 for a pair, the latter being gels of course. Does it make sense to go the lowest cost route for the time being, or are the lowest cost batteries just junk and a waste of money? I have had vendors ship batteries to me before that were DOA, so guaranteed freshness is an issue as well.

The other issue I hope to get answered tomorrow when I call the manufacturer is whether their stock/OEM charger would work with both SLA and gel batteries. Looking forward to your comments. Thanks for your interest in any case.

 

[Wheazel]

Hi

I have worked some with wheelchair development and depending on your chair, you might need the mass from the lead batteries to keep the COG low enough.
Otherwise some lithium system would be my pick, even though I am aware of that they haven't become mainstream in the wheelchair bizz yet. I have built some light weight chairs with lifepo4 batteries and also 18650 batteries. I would not use rc lipo for this application.

There might be something useful to read on wheelchairdriver.com aswell.
However the forum is owned by a guy that builds powerchairs and he clearly favors the solutions he uses himself.
Which is headway cells if I recall.

 

[Windmaker]

Mass can always be added to fix the COG issue:

-- have more battery to increase range or power,

--if there are things you wish you could carry with you all the time (water, food, tools, books, etc.), add some cargo "boxes" and keep them in there

--leave one or more of the lead batteries in to run a lighting system for nighttime use (you could add lighting all over it to make it more visible if you are in places where that is an issue, or make better ligthing so you can see where you're going in areas that are not well lit, etc).

--add plain old weights (lead, steel, whatever) to the frame between the wheels/under the deck, out of the way of areas you can actually reach/use. (this frees up all the other area for carrying stuff, if the new battery is smaller than the old, as well as lighter)

I take it that you also support the idea of LifePo4 batteries?.....should they also be 12v 55ah as well?...because the price I found for just one was outrageous