Flasher Battery Question

[blackdog1101]

A question for you guys who understand electronics better than me. My Marcum VX-1 has a 12 volt 7 amp battery. Yesterday I bought a battery at Fleet Farm for the rope lights in my Otter. The battery I bought is 12 volt 8 amp. Would anything bad happen to my Marcum if I put the 8 amp battery on it by mistake?

[morpho]

it would take longer to drain it as its a higher capacity battery

[timjones]

Nope. Would work just fine. The Marcum would actually run a little longer on the 8 Amp battery.

[blackdog1101]

OK thanks that's great guys. I just didn't want to hurt the flasher, and thought maybe I better mark the one battery more clearly. Since it doens't matter, I won't worry about it. Thanks!

[aanderud]

Yeah, the rating they have is in "amp hours". Or sometimes "milli-amp hours". A 7 amp-hour battery will last approximately an hour with a 7 amp load, or 7 hours with a 1 amp load. The 8 amp hour battery will last approximately 8 hours with a 1 amp load. The numbers are all fudge factor numbers, as they were probably taken in a lab somewhere with a very specific load at a very specific temperature and other controlled variables. But even without getting into absolute numbers as far as hours go, you can usually be relatively sure that the 8 amp-hour battery will last longer than the 7 amp-hour battery.

In fact, as long as you're providing 12 volts from a supply that can handle the amperage draw you're going to put on it, you are OK. You could run your flasher and lights off a normal huge trolling motor battery, which run usually in the 90 to 120 amp-hour range, or even a 12 volt RV battery, which run even bigger.