I explain the whole deep cycle/starting battery thing to my customers over and over again. I work on boats for a living(27 years) and sell a lot of batteries. If you go to Wall Mart or West Marine to get a battery for your boat, they will usually sell you a deep cycle, because most people think "marine battery" means deep cycle. The only place you want a deep cycle is in a situation where you have a low amp drain over a long period of time with a low amp recharge over a long period of time(hence the name, "deep cycle"). Its for trolling motors, house battery banks and invertor banks. These will be discharged slowly. I finally got to talk to the local West marine manager and showed him Mercury Marine, Yamaha Marine and Suzuki Marine battery requirements. No deep cycles for starting purposes. That brings us to winching batteries. You winch is a basically a hopped up starter motor, it pulls high amps, over a relative short amount of time and you recharge it fairly quick with a high amp alternator. you need fast discharge/recharge rates. Every one tries to use a deep cycle because they think if they run a starting battery dead, it will kill it. It will probably hurt the performance of it, but no worse than high loading a deep cycle would. You are better off with a starting battery for winching. Compare the CCA(cold cranking amps) of each battery and look at the reserve time, find the battery that has the highest amps first, then reserve. I haven't sold any of the AGMs or Gel batteries for use in boats because they don't seem to last as long as a good wet cell. Most AGMs and Gels require a lower charge rate and finishing voltage. Most of them advise to turn the charging voltage down on adjustable regulators to prevent them from overcharging, on board battery chargers usually have a multi position switch to change the charging rate for the different type of batteries. EFI engines require high CCA ratings so the ecm doesn't get any voltage drops when the engine is started and the starter load is put on the system.That being said, wheeling has a whole different set of parameters for batteries that usually require a sealed or non spill-able battery. I've put a lot of Optima batteries in the recycle bin at the metal shop(they are paying $.30/lbs for batteries). As far as the battery brand goes, I've been selling Deka brand(they make the sears batteries,and West Marine) for over 12 years, I have yet to have to get a single battery warrantied, I've had several get completely discharged and tested good after recharging. And as far as the dual purpose batteries, I've found they don't do either requirement as good as the dedicated batteries. Sorry for the rant, seems lie I'm explaining this to a customer at least once a week, you wouldn't believe the arguments I get about how their expensive agm deep cycle can't be the problem with burnt out starters(or the cheap ass #6 battery cables as well). I've watched people spend $800 in batteries to patch a problem with expensive batteries rather than pay me to replace the battery cables with good cables.
Are there any other good options?
), and $149 out-the-door 
