Re: battery charging problems

[Lee Hart <leeahart@earthlink.net>]

Michael A Perry wrote:
> #2 battery continues to bubble long after the charger is off and the
> voltage keeps dropping.  It shows the save offline voltage as the
> others, but that cell #1 is not gassing at all.

Sounds like a bad cell, with an internal partial short that is
discharging it and prevents full charging. Pull that one battery out of
the string, and reset your charger and E-meter for the new lower system
voltage. If the battery is bad, you will find that performance and range
actually increase without it.

> Amperate never drops below 1.8A. I even tried to equalize the
> batteries as Lee suggested. Amperage jumped to max (5A is the
> new setting) and never dropped.

With a bad battery in the string, the whole pack behaves as a lower
voltage pack. If left uncorrected, the rest of the pack gets
overcharged, and thus fails sooner as well.

> The gel cell doesn't seem to be working...

Yes, it sounds like it is bad (or unconnected). What kind is it? Can you
pull it out and run some simple load tests?

For a quick experiment, you could disconnect and jumper around the
suspected bad propulsion battery, and use it as the 12v accessory
battery. It is probably plenty good enough as an accessory battery. It
will get you by until you can fix it right.
-- 
Lee A. Hart                     Ring the bells that you can ring
4209 France Ave. N.             Forget the perfect offering
Robbinsdale, MN 55422 USA       There is a crack in everything
(612) 533-3226                  That's how the light gets in!
<leeahart@earthlink.net>                Leonard Cohen