Well, I haven't yet equalized/reconditioned any of the batteries yet. I am thinking I'll do that over the weekend. In the meantime, I hooked up batteries #1 and #2 in series and batteries #3 and #4 in series and have been charging them the last couple of days.
So.... I'm looking at this thinking that I should probably leave battery #4 alone.
I am under the impression that I most likely should recondition/equalize battery #3.
I'm less certain about batteries #1 and #2. Does it make sense that I should hook them up to my B&D charger and have it go through it's reconditioning cycle/mode with these two hooked up together? Or would you leave them alone for now?
If nobody replies, I guess I'm thinking it makes sense to do the following:
Recondition batts #1 and #2 together as 12-volt bank with the newer B&D charger in it's recondition mode.
Hook up Batt #3 to the manual charger and put it in it's 6V manual mode starting early saturday morning and monitor it closely throughout saturday as was suggested earlier.
Appreciate you guys thoughts/feedback for this battery-newbie.
* This post was
edited 04/11/12 08:22pm by flyswamper *
Constructive disagreement is encouraged. It is how I/we learn!
hmmmm.... thought I'd go ahead and start the recondition cycle for Battery 1 & 2 hooked together. Hooked up the B&D charger, hit the recondition button and it immediately tells me "reconditioning cycle completed." So basically, it seems it is refusing to go into reconditioning mode it seems. Unplugged it a few times, reconnected, same thing.....
All I can say now is hmmmmmm and scratch my head at this point...
flyswamper wrote: Thanks.... certainly sounds like a job for the weekend when I can be around for many hours in a row (and not have to goto my day job).
Is it safe to assume that the "15A 6V manual mode" on my older charger is likely a is a constant amperage mode as opposed to a constant voltage mode then? Because if it was constant voltage and my multimeter only registered 6.7 volts then it would never seem to "get there" if it was a constant voltage mode.
Another newbie question.... You mention that after you get the SG up on them, you would hook them up and equalize them. I'll google it right after writing this, but I guess I'm still a bit fuzzy on what you mean by equalizing there. I guess I am having a hard time understanding the difference between reconditioning and equalizing.
Forgive me for the silly questions... I like to think I'm plenty smart to learn all this stuff... I just am starting from a very basic-beginnings place...
Reconditioning and equalizing are used interchangeably. Some use one and others use the other. Both involve overcharging the battery and I use equalizing to simply things. I'm thinking that if the SG in all the batteries is really close or the same, then hooking them all up together and equalizing them won't be needed. But if they're like 50 or 100 points apart them hook them all up and equalize them together. This would be the last step after you've brought them all up individually.
As far as constant current/voltage, that depends on how your charger operates. My HF charge that I use for this purpose quickly ramps up to max current then starts to taper as voltage rises. Mine typically ramps up volts fairly quickly then levels off in the mid 15's for a while. I have yet to go over 15.6V. And 3 hours is usually all it takes plus I equalize them altogether.
Your situation is different in that we're trying to recover your batteries not just do maintenance or top off charging.
flyswamper wrote: hmmmm.... thought I'd go ahead and start the recondition cycle for Battery 1 & 2 hooked together. Hooked up the B&D charger, hit the recondition button and it immediately tells me "reconditioning cycle completed." So basically, it seems it is refusing to go into reconditioning mode it seems. Unplugged it a few times, reconnected, same thing.....
All I can say now is hmmmmmm and scratch my head at this point...
It thinks the battery is reconditioned. One of the problems of the "smart" chargers. Separate those two and hook up the manual one to each. Go ahead and run it. You can always finish it later if SG doesn't stop rising before bed time or whatever else you have planned to do. Monitor the voltage. See how fast the voltage rises. From there you can determine how often to check it.
Did you remove the surface charge from the batteries in question? If not--run them down just a bit and try again.
flyswamper wrote: hmmmm.... thought I'd go ahead and start the recondition cycle for Battery 1 & 2 hooked together. Hooked up the B&D charger, hit the recondition button and it immediately tells me "reconditioning cycle completed." So basically, it seems it is refusing to go into reconditioning mode it seems. Unplugged it a few times, reconnected, same thing.....
All I can say now is hmmmmmm and scratch my head at this point...
Well...I'm working my way through the batteries with the 6v manual charger process. It looks like it keeps the voltage to about 7.6 volts or so during the charge and is giving the batteries around 10 amps or so. The battery being charged will be "bubbling" a bit. I wouldn't call it a vigorous bubbling action, but it is doing it. Have managed to get battery #3's specific gravity up quite a bit.
The one thing that I'm having a bit of trouble with is getting consistent specific gravity measurements. I'm using a hydrometer that is a glass "floater" inside a glass tube. The trouble seems to be that there can be just enough friction between the top of the floater and the side of the outer tube that the floater doesn't want to float freely. I do a lot of jiggling of the hydrometer to try and figure out where it would rest if it wasn't up against the side. I think maybe simple "twisting" motions are giving me the best result. But... I can see differences in sp.gr. of maybe 0.2 depending on how I jiggle the hydrometer. Any tips on reading these things?
When I get done I'll post up what I eventually got each battery up to.
No... I didn't do anything to remove the surface charge. I'll have to think about what 12volt item I have lying around the house that I might be able to hotwire to the batts and do this. I think I've got one of those 12-volt "truck" air compressors for putting air in your tires somewhere. Presumably I can hotwire that thing and run it for a short spell (I'm just a little fuzzy on how long would be approprite.... guess just use the multimeter and watch for a quick little drop in voltage...)
mena661... thanks for pointing out the obvious to me. I don't know why I was thinking I should put the off till the weekend when there really shouldn't be any reason I couldn't start/stop the manual equalizing process as needed. Tonight I'll go ahead and hook up the manual charger to batt #3 since I was gonna do it with the manual charger anyway.
I'll probably muck-around with the aircompressor to try to remove a little surface charge and see if I can get that B&D auto-charger into recondition mode on the other two. If not, I'll just see how the manual charging way works and repeat if I haven't blown up the other battery already.
Thanks for essentially "holding my hands" on this one guys. I have read quite a bit on the internet searching here in the forums as well as elsewhere. It is always nice to kinda run what I think I've read through with some of you guys as well. Keeps me from making too many silly mistakes and often points out things I should just go ahead and do (like not waiting).
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