Battery Chargers

CurtisJ73

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No idea if this is the right place to post this question, but.... I purchased a Stanley BC15BS battery charger. A "benefit / feature" of this charger is "Reconditioning a battery". Never heard of this before so came here to ask. The manual says "Periodic reconditioning is recommended to maintain a battery's optimum performance" Does this mean a working battery should be "periodically reconditioned", or only a battery that's completely dead?
 

bertsmobile1

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A battery is simply a container where an electrically unbalanced chemical reaction takes places so we get the excess electricity available at the terminals.
When we take some electricity out the reaction starts up again producing more electricity till all of the chemicals in the battery are used up.
This is how a dry cell works
If the chemicals can be forced to go back the way they were before we took the electricity out this is rechargable battery.

Because this is a chemical reaction, the chemicals have to come into contact with each other for it to happen.
If it was happening in a vat, we could simply stir it up like you do with epoxy fillers but it is happening in a sealed container so you need to have a diffusion even happening where the spent chemicals can get recharged by the bit that is next to them so they can again react,
This is why you can put a flat battery aside for a while and suddenly it will have seemed to partially recharged.

To enable all of the consumable chemicals to react you need to fully flatten the battery then overcharge the battery every now and then.
The fully flattenug followed by overcharging is what the battery tenders call "Refreshing " or "reclaiming " etc etc etc.

To get the best life out of any rechargable battery it should be fully flattened then quickly recharged.
The 2 worst things you can do to a battery is allow it to sit dead flat for long periods or keep it fully charged for long periods and the former is far more destructive than the latter.

IF you want to get really deeply in to batteries, http://batteryuniversity.com/ This is the place to go.
 

Teds

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Flooded Lead-acid starting batteries (the type used in cars and motorcycles) do not like to be "flattened", and will be ruined quickly.

It is beneficial to give them a periodic slight overcharge. A good battery charger will pay for itself, and a battery tender or maintainer aka "smart" charger is useful to keep them up over the winter.
 

turbofiat124

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The 2 worst things you can do to a battery is allow it to sit dead flat for long periods or keep it fully charged for long periods and the former is far more destructive than the latter.

Not to sound snotty but that sounds contradictory. The first statement I agree with, I just don't understand the second half. I would think eventually any kind of battery would loose energy over time whether something was drawing power from it (e.g. radio memory) or not so how could it stay fully charged?

I will agree that if a typically (non deep cycle) type battery goes dead and stays dead for a certain length of time (don't know how long that is), it's toast. As I found out on my Chevy van.

I was able to save the battery on my Trabant. Somehow the key got turned to the on position and the battery went flat. But I was lucky that it took a charge and has been OK ever since. That was over a year ago. I must have caught it in time.

I invested in some of those $20 trickle chargers from Harbor Freight and they have paid for themselves. I keep them connected to all my collector cars even if I don't plan on driving them for a couple of weeks. I even pulled the batteries off my riding mowers and have them hooked up to trickle chargers.

Here is a good reason not to use one of those "old type" battery chargers. The ones with an amp meter and needle.

This is the battery on my Fiat Spider. The battery is in the trunk with a cover over it. I had been using this old Craftsman battery charger my grandfather bought. Before I invested in trickle chargers, I'd just connect the battery charger every couple of months to my car(s). You would think when the needle falls to zero, the battery charger would kick off but they don't. If you leave them connected after the needle hits zero, they will continue to charge. Then there is this sulfur yellow residue all over the place.

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Since using the trickle chargers, I have not had this problem.

Here is something I've yet to figure out. Same subject, only different type of battery.

Why is it if you leave AA, AAA, C or D batteries in a device (like a radio), they eventually leak? However if you remove the batteries, they typically will not leak.

So let's say you have two identical pocket radios. You buy a 10 pack of AA batteries, place four in one radio and four in another. If you leave the batteries in one radio, about a year later, the batteries will leak. But if you remove the batteries from the other radio when not in use and place them in a zip lock baggie, they will not leak. Even if all eight batteries go dead simultaneously.

I've yet to figure this out. Also I can't recall ever seeing a 9 volt battery leak acid.
 

bertsmobile1

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A battery works because the PASTE on the plate reacts with the electrolyte.
This happens primarily at the electrolyte / paste interface.
While the electrolyte can penetrate a very very small distance into the paste, most of the reaction happens at the surface.
Then electrons have to migrate from deep in the paste to near the surface.
If you keep the battery fully charged all the time the paste changes and the electrons have difficulty in migrating through the paste and the battery looses its CAPACITY.
We call this a "surface charge " and it happens because the paste just underneath the surface can not transfer electrons to the paste at the interface.

Using cheap battery tenders makes this worse as they do not allow the battery to cycle.
Good ones will flatten the battery about 1/3 then top it up to full charge.
Cheap ones keep the battery in an overcharged state which blows the surface layer of atoms off the plates so you always have fresh active atoms at the interface.
Because it is always overcharged when you hit the starter, you have 13 + Volts at the instant the starting circuit closes so the initial voltage drop is a lot less thus the engine cranks faster and usually seems to start better.
However if you try extended cranking, the battery will run down very quickly..

The instant the starter engages, the CURRENT draw can be anything up to 1000A and then it drops to the cranking AMPS of around 200 to 400
 

7394

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Battery in my Chevy Truck is at 10 years old next month (truck build date), I have been using 1.5mA Battery MINDers* with temp compensators, aka smart chargers for approx 20 years.

I load test my batteries every year, the truck battery checks out at 96% .....
 

turbofiat124

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A battery works because the PASTE on the plate reacts with the electrolyte.
This happens primarily at the electrolyte / paste interface.
While the electrolyte can penetrate a very very small distance into the paste, most of the reaction happens at the surface.
Then electrons have to migrate from deep in the paste to near the surface.
If you keep the battery fully charged all the time the paste changes and the electrons have difficulty in migrating through the paste and the battery looses its CAPACITY.
We call this a "surface charge " and it happens because the paste just underneath the surface can not transfer electrons to the paste at the interface.

Using cheap battery tenders makes this worse as they do not allow the battery to cycle.
Good ones will flatten the battery about 1/3 then top it up to full charge.
Cheap ones keep the battery in an overcharged state which blows the surface layer of atoms off the plates so you always have fresh active atoms at the interface.
Because it is always overcharged when you hit the starter, you have 13 + Volts at the instant the starting circuit closes so the initial voltage drop is a lot less thus the engine cranks faster and usually seems to start better.
However if you try extended cranking, the battery will run down very quickly..

The instant the starter engages, the CURRENT draw can be anything up to 1000A and then it drops to the cranking AMPS of around 200 to 400

So far the ones I bought from Harbor Freight have been doing the trick. Thye have a "box" with a red LED between the battery connectors and the power supply. I'm assuming this box detects when the battery reaches 12.6 volts then shuts off and starts charging again when it drops to whatever.

The last statement would explain a theory of mine. On some of my older cars, when I crank the battery over, I loose my radio presents. Particularly if the battery is weak and I have to crank it over longer than usual. However if I drive the car everyday, then this doesn't happen. My theory is when cranking the engine over the starter pulls so much current there is a massive voltage drop between the battery and radio.

My Citroen did this after I installed a radio. I checked the battery voltage and it was 12.0 volts but had enough power to turn the 2 cylinder 600cc engine over just fine. Ordinarily a battery with a voltage of less than 12.6 would not even turn a 2 liter four cylinder engine over.

But once I drove the car for about a week it never lost it's presets. My 68 Ford does this and now my Trabant. But for some reason my Fiat Spider does not.
 
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