Three to five years is a reasonable life expectency for a battery. If you are deep cycling it (stereo load) and it is NOT a deep cycle battery then its life will definately be on the short side. What destorys a battery quicker than anything else is allowing it to go completely dead, and it is even worse if you let it sit that way for any lenght of time. For example, your car battery can be doing fine until the day that you leave the headlights on after driving to work in the rain. You jump start the car but the battery never recovers. My suggestion is to change both batteries. You got three good years out of those batteries and now it is time to change them. You might squeeze another season out of them, but then again you might be sitting out in the middle of the lake and not be able to start your engine and then pay through the nose for a new battery. Don't be penny wise and pound foolish. Don't risk it. Change both batteries so that they are equivilant in all ways.
|