Battery Life Saver

[sonicj]

Originally Posted by dahur

Yes, I know it's not to take the place of the factory charger.
On the occasions we've driven it around, 15-20 minutes or so, I put it on the factory charger. If I drive 600 ft to the neighbors house, when I get back I put it on the BatteryMinder. It charges for a short time, then goes into float mode.

sounds like a excellent routine!



heres a thread containing my results from a 12V BatteryMINDer Plus desulfator on a tired sealed lead acid battery. link

*note - while my results shows significant improvements in performance, the lack of a control (simple float charing over the same period of time) should be considered.
-sj

[dahur]

Originally Posted by sonicj

sounds like a excellent routine!



heres a thread containing my results from a 12V BatteryMINDer Plus desulfator on a tired sealed lead acid battery. link

*note - while my results shows significant improvements in performance, the lack of a control (simple float charing over the same period of time) should be considered.
-sj

It looks like you have provided some definite hard data for the desulfation process. I mainly bought the BatteryMINDer for its float function. However if it wants to knock a few crystals off the plates, that certainly won't hurt my feelings!

[simple man]

Originally Posted by JohnnieB

I hear you about the private owner, I should have prefixed my reference to one with competent, conscientious or knowledgeable, or some other qualifier.

According to the date codes, my batteries are two year newer than my cart, so either Trojan was less than honest with the date coding, my batteries are actually going on four years old and were fairly well maintained, or the originals weren't maintained very well and had to be replaced, so the set I've got now are only about two years old and probably weren't maintained any better than the first set.

Whatever the case, I guess I'm lucky that I was able to recover as much as I did. It's allowed my to put off buying new batteries from last summer to next spring, maybe a bit longer.
Of course, most of my trips are less than a two miles one way and the only +30% grade I routinely climb is only about 50 yards long.

I sent you a PM about long term storage, but I'll repeat some of it here:
The trick is to keep the batteries fully charged or close to it without letting the plates become exposed.
Water is lost during gassing and in warmer temperatures, through evaporation.
So use a charger that has minimal gassing and keep the batteries in as cool of a place as possible/practical.
Without any gassing, the batteries won't be charging more than about 90-95% SoC, but that ought to be high enough to keep the battery sulfation to a minimum.

Some of the regular GC chargers automatically initiate a recharge cycle when the battery voltage drops to a predetermined level, but they cause battery gassing during the final stage(s), so anything more than a couple months of unattended storage might cause the electrolyte level to drop too far.

A C/100 trickle charge (about 2A for a T-105) a few hours per day would probably work for long term storage (IE: 6 months)

Here's the Hillybilly Hotdog website.
http://www.hillbillyhotdogs.com/

I go to the original one in Lesage. It's about 30 miles down the road from my place, but well worth the drive.
Actually, we hit the stores in Huntington about once a month and it is on the way, but we make special trips to it occasionally.

To get an idea of what the place is like - check out this video.
http://www.hillbillyhotdogs.com/ddd.php

You hit the nail on the head, John! Get ready to choke! They were probably filled from a water hose, possibly irrigation water, and to boot usually overfilled! I'm not saying all golf courses have horrible maintenance, but some sure do! They figure on a two year lease, so who cares if that's all the longer the batteries last!