[THEFERMANATOR]

Originally Posted by Genie Aye

I have to disagree, any quality deep cycle battery will do the job of starting any outboard on the market. If you run alot of electronics like me, that's all you want. Personally I run 2 dekaney group 27 deep cycles on my boat. I start a 200HO Etec, have 2 vhfs always on, hds7 gen2 and a elite 5 sounder along with radar, 2 meter radio and tunes, most of the time everything is on but the radar. No problems in 10 years, so far.

Just because you can, does not meen you SHOULD. Deep cycles can give high amperage loads when needed for starting, but any good deep cycle battery is designed to put out low to moderate amperage amounts for longer periods of time. Using true deep cycle batteries for cranking WILL shorten the batteries life, that's an undisputable fact. The thing is there is very few TRUE deep cycle batteries in the group 24/27 range because they know people are going to abuse them as starting batteries. True deep cycle batteries will not have a cranking amp rating, only amp/hour ratings which is what is important to a deep cycle battery.