Re: battery charging problems

[Michael A Perry <mperry@efn.org>]

Well... talk about shocked!  I called the Excide rep her in town, expecting
the standard run-around I get when dealing with the average local battery
dealer.  Not only was he interested in the problem, but came out to the
house and did a hydrometer test on the battery.  Low-cell (#1) was 1225,
high (#6) was 1300.  I wasn't home at the time, but I'll call him back
tomorrow to see what warranty is on this battery.  While he's here, he's
going to run a check on the other cells, too.

For a good battery, these specific gravity readings shouldn't fluctuate more
than 25, and it's deffinately bad if they fluctuate more than 50.  With a
properly charged system, all the cells in all batteries should average
around 1275.  That's going to be my first purchase specific for this little
car.  They are cheap and accurate.

It's been 25 years since I maintained batteries (huge 2V cells, used to
power a telephone exchange) so I'd almost forgotten about doing these
tests.  As a second method of testing, the batteries can be disconnected and
load tested.

Lee Hart wrote:

> > 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.

Thanks.  I'll be replacing that bad battery before doing any more charging.

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

Yep... I'll be pulling that battery and checking it out this weekend.  I'm
beginning to suspect that that battery may only charge when the ignition is
turned on.  If it's actually bad, it will also be replaced.  I want this car
as "clean" as possible.  It's the funnest toy I've ever had.