Great information, I always wondered what they meant by a float charger.
Thanks for the explanation.
Rascal
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-dakota-truck@bent.twistedbits.net
[mailto:owner-dakota-truck@bent.twistedbits.net] On Behalf Of
jon@dakota-truck.net
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 7:13 PM
To: dakota-truck-moderator@bent.twistedbits.net
Subject: Re: DML: Optima Red top.
Bill Pitz <bill@pitz.net> wrote:
> Barry Oliver wrote:
>> Well, I had a Diehard Gold in there, but like before, it gave zero
>> warning when it went poof. It was a pry off and all of the levels
>> were
>> good. I couldn't find my little tester, but it sat on a 2a trickle
>> all
>> night and that didn't help...
> Yup, that's what happened to my stock battery. No warning at all,
> really, and once it went, no amount of charging would bring it back
> to life.
> I'm dreading the day that my Optima Red Top decides to quit on me,
> since
> it will probably go the same way -- without warning. It's only been
> completely drained once, after which I fully recharged it and left
> it on
> the trickle charger overnight. But, who knows how long it will
> really
> last? The truck sits in my garage 5 or 6 days a week now, which
> probably isn't helping the battery either.
What you can do to prolong its life is to hook it up to a float
charger, rather than a trickle charger. A trickle charger usually
does not have any sort of protection and will boil out the electrolyte
because they generally charge at a high voltage. (They do this in
order to compensate for their low amperage; to help "push" the current
into the battery.) That's fine if you have a deeply discharged battery
and need to charge it at a low current, but not so great if you want
to leave it hooked up for a longer period of time.) A float charger
on the other hand, you can leave hooked up 24/7 365. It usually has
some overload protection built in, and although I'm sure it varies by
manufacturer, generally only charge at 13.5v and of course at a very
low amperage. This means that they aren't great for trying to charge
up a low battery since it will take forever (weeks, or months), but if
your battery is already charged, you can hook it up and it will keep
the battery at that level as well as compensate for minor power draws
from the vehicle itself such as the clock, radio presets, etc.
The "Battery Tender" brand of float charger seems to be about the
best out there with some logic built into it, amperage switching, etc.
and has a good reputation. Last I knew, they catered to motorcycle
and watercraft type batteries, but they will work on regular vehicle
batteries, it just takes more time if you are trying to use it to
bring up the charge in the battery. I have one of them and use it all
the time to gently bring a battery with a low charge back up safely,
without having to worry about overcharging. I also have several float
chargers from Harbor Freight, which I hook up to my vehicles when they
are tucked away for winter. These are much cheaper, not as fancy, but
seem to do the job. They are on sale right now for about $7.50.
(Normal price on them seems to be in the $10-15 range.) I plan to
pick up a few more since I have more batteries than chargers at the
moment, but when I initially bought them, I got them on sale for
something like $3-4 each, which I could not resist. :-) I probably
should have gotten more at the time; oh well. The manual for the
Harbor Freight (Chicago Electric) chargers doesn't list an output
amperage, but it does give an input voltage of 120v, 14 watts. That
means its only drawing 116 milliamps, so I'm assuming its output to
the battery is somewhere in the neighborhood of a tenth of an amp (the
voltage output is 13.5v).
--
-Jon-
.- Jon Steiger -- jon@dakota-truck.net or jon@jonsteiger.com -.
| '96 Kolb Firefly, '96 Suzuki Intruder, Miscellaneous Mopars |
`-------------------------------- http://www.jonsteiger.com --'
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