My cat powered Breakaway came from the factory with 2 8D chassis batteries. The HD mechanic at my work (bus garage)says one of them could be eliminated which would give me more space for additional house golf cart batteries (only have 2 now) Does anyone see a problem with this? We live in the northwest (vancouver island) and have never had any starting issues. Most of our traveling is south to warmer weather in winter where we boondock as much as possible so could use the extra house capacity. thanks

Your mechanic is right - I see no problem with you starting on one 8D battery provided the temps don't drop below freezing.

Just make sure that it is a very good battery and you are versed in an emergency starting technique that parallels your multiple house batteries with your one chassis battery. Most coaches have an emergency start switch which does this for you with a simple push of a button. ~Y.M.M.V. ~

One 8D will start your engine. Or you could go to 2 4Ds.

I'm really surprised that spartan thought the 3116 would need 2 8Ds to start.

A side note is that you could remove one 8D from the chassis and use it for addtional house. Our Newell came from the factory with 6 8Ds as house batteries. I switched over to T105s so I didn't have to deal with the weight issue.

Also when I converted our bus it 2 8Ds. I used them for house batteries for 12 years. Just had a generator battery so I could start the genset if I discharged the 8Ds to far. Worked great. About every 4 years I went to Sam's club and bought 2 new ones for $100 each.

A side note: I got the chance to talk to a battery engineer from Gould National Battery. I asked about using 8Ds as deep cycle batteries and the answer was very simple. "The 8D is the best deep cycle we make."