BoatBanter.com - View Single Post - Battery Killer

Larry

(Floating Mind) wrote in news:8736-44ECA717-16
@storefull-3114.bay.webtv.net:

Ping - Larry The Cable Guy, or should I say Larry The Charger Guy.

It's not the end of the world, it's only 1 deep cycle battery, but it
was only 14 months old, so in that respect it kinda hurts.

Anything I can do to get _some_ life back into it?

It's not the battery. It's the charger.....Huh??

Open the stubborn "maintenance free" caps by prying them out and look in
the cells to see if they're dry. Don't fill them. Add DISTILLED WATER
ONLY until it just submerges the plate tops, a little at a time. Any
cell the plates are still submerged, leave it alone until we're done. We
can't charge battery plates that aren't submerged.

Fancy battery chargers look at how you have them connected before they'll
turn on, to make sure you have the terminals hooked the right way, not
shorted, etc. So, when they see a really DEAD battery like yours hooked
up to them, they say, "Aha! The stupid has the terminals shorted
together! There's no voltage, here, like a battery." They stubbornly
refuse to start.....

Go find a simple old automatic battery charger, or one not so automatic
at all. Charge the battery for a few hours with the simple battery
charger until it has some voltage, then charge the battery with the
"wonder charger", which will now sense the battery has "some voltage" and
will complete the charge.

Note to self - Keep old battery chargers around just in case this happens
again......

Question #2) Not relating to previous question, this is just a general
charging question for decent batteries. You've also mentioned in past
posts that it's better to charge a battery slowly. What I usually do
is
leave one battery on the charger at the dock when I leave for the
weekend. The Schumacher Fully Automatic allows me to do this and not
worry about it even if I don't come back for two weeks. But even if I
do come back the following weekend it's still been on the charger for 4
or 5 days minimum. I don't use my batteries in banks, I use them
singly
in different areas of the boat, so is there a smaller(amperage) charger
that is fully automatic that would work better for me in that
application? Being that the battery will always have at least 4 days
to
charge I'm thinking it might be better to use one that is less than 12
amp capable. What do you think?

Yes. It's at your high-class marine store...the auto department of
WalMart. The charger is an octagon, black plastic brick...all sealed up
with two LEDs on the side where the label is. The model is Schumaker SE-
1-12S "1.5A Fully Automatic Onboard Battery Charger/Maintainer". It has
a 6" long power cord on one end and red and black battery leads coming
out the other. There are no switches...It's automatic, you know. Last
price I remember was around $20. Buy one for every bank of batteries on
the boat. I took mine out of my boat before I sold it. It's an
invaluable asset. It has also been mounted in its bracket on 2 jetskis
and two power boats over the years...(c; It's SEALED in epoxy, which
accounts for its survival. The model number may have changed some but
the new ones still look quite the same.

The green LED means it's plugged into AC power. The red LED means the
battery is all charged up and I've COMPLETELY SHUT OFF until the battery
voltage drops a whole volt, at which time I'm gonna zap it again. The
red LED is also an EXCELLENT charge indicator for even the simplest
outboard motor. Even unpowered, the red LED will be lit for hours after
the boat's engine charger has been shut down. If it doesn't light, it
hasn't been properly charged to 14.2VDC. No AC power is necessary to get
it to light up...just voltage. Leave the charger permanently connected
by its ring terminals straight to the battery terminals. It comes with a
2 piece mounting bracket to mount to the bulkhead beside the battery.

Autozone or similar auto parts houses also have them in their battery
departments. It will never boil a car or boat battery overcharging. I
also use it at home to charge even the smallest 12V gelcells in my shop!
When you hook it to a small gelcell, the red light comes on from the 1.5A
overcharge current in a matter of minutes, goes back out, and starts
cycling...er, ah...like those fancy pulse chargers?..(c; When it no
longer pulses and stays red, the little gelcell is charged.

Even on a little jetski battery, I ran it continuously for weeks without
electrolyte loss.

--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.