Charging / breaking in new batteries?

[Speedchaser]

Good idea. Let us know.

[scottyb]

Trojan will tell you their batteries don't need a break in. GM will tell you their car doesn't need one either. It's your money and your call.

Trojan will tell you their new battery is not 100% of it's potential until up to as many as 150 recharge cycles. So why would you put a full discharge on a partially full battery?

Keep in mind you can discharge these batteries 90% but it greatly decreases the number of times they can recover.


I hope this helps. We don't sell batteries but there is lots of battery info on our website for your benefit.

[SaltLifeCC]

Scotty, perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but your last post, to me, seems to be a contradiction. Are you saying do a break in, or don't?

Anyway, you are correct with respect to Trojan. Below is a direct quote from technical support:

Forget about that break-in procedure. Always plug cart in and charge fully.

However, I'm having a difficult time, reading your last post, if you agree with them or not. Maybe you are saying batteries do, in fact, need a break in period, before they reach full potential, but that break in is simply a period of time/cycles of riding and charging with disregard to discharging to a certain percentage for the first 10 - 20 cycles?

[Sergio]

I had done some research on this subject and this is what I learned:
New batteries go thru a chemical transformation once they are activated with the electrolyte. The chemical process only goes so deep into the plates before the charge process finishes. It takes several charge/discharge cycles until the entire plate has gone thru this transformation and the battery can deliver its full rated capacity. Perhaps the manufactures don't like to call it a "break-in" period, but they all say it takes several cycles before you can get the full rated capacity.
A battery left in a discharged state is probably the worst thing it can happen to it, so the "always plug it once you are done" is good practice.
The only reference I ever found that may be related to the discussion about how much Depth of Discharge (DoD) is needed before recharging was this:
"A battery that is continually cycled 5% or less will usually not last as long as one cycled down 10%. This happens because at very shallow cycles, the Lead Dioxide tends to build up in clumps on the the positive plates rather in an even film."
I think that comes from the folks that use them in solar panels setups where the shallow discharge is the normal mode of operation.
If you think you used less than 5% DoD, waiting a day or two to charge will not cause any sulfates to crystallize either.