Battery care on a short tripper?

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted by wrcsixeight
I think the only figure I would believe on such a device is the resitance and the voltage,

Even the resistance figure seems to be off on this one. I've read that IR on a new battery should be between 9 and 13 mOhm, and as the battery ages, IR increases, so there is no way my 5 year old battery has IR of only 4 mOhm.

 

[wrcsixeight]

Agreed, it does seem low, as the best group31 AGMS list a 2.2mOhm resistance.

http://2cw8eb1vmmgg3g5i7jzt6upo.wpe...Circut_Current_of_Lifeline_Batteries.pdf

https://www.northstarbattery.com/product/nsb-agm31

900 cca would indicate a low resistance battery though. Is it a group 65?

My group 27 northstar AGM claims 930CCA and has a 2.6 mOhm figure

https://www.northstarbattery.com/product/nsb-agm27

https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_measure_internal_resistance

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted by wrcsixeight
900 cca would indicate a low resistance battery though. Is it a group 65?
It's H8 (group 49).

 

[wrcsixeight]

That's a pretty big battery.
Group 65s are a bit weird being less tall long and wide they usually have an unusually high CCA to capacity (20hr rate) ratio

The G49 is even longer.

If you look at this link of Odyssey AGM's The resistence is directly related to CCA, with a few exceptions, one being the group 65 which has only 2 mOhm but not quite as high CCA as the larger group 31 at 2.2mOhm


http://www.odysseybattery.com/Specs/ExtremeSeries

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted by Quattro Pete
Originally Posted by circuitsmith
Check electrolyte level,
This is a maintenance free battery with no way to get to the electrolyte, unfortunately.
Quote
then charge for an hour at 16V.
Thanks. I don't own a manual charger to accomplish this.

As for this BA101 tester, I don't really trust it. The internal resistance that it reports seems suspiciously low. And when I used it to check the battery in my SRT, where the battery is practically new and I keep it topped off, it showed that it's only charged to about 75%. Doesn't seem right.


The 10.29V conduction voltage gives you some indication of impedance. Certainly it isn't high enough to condemn the battery.

Those testers are very sensitive to having both halves of the clamp in good contact, and good conduction from the actual battery terminal clamp. I noted when recently messing with my truck, that surface corrosion there can have a big effect. YMMV based upon the material and surface area.

Have you validated the battery voltage with an actual multimeter, probes stuck hard into the terminals, and between various points?

 

[Quattro Pete]

Results from a Cen-Tech tester. Ambient temp: around 30F. This was a few days after I charged the battery on the Solar Pro-Logix charger.

I will retest in about a week. We have some really cold weather coming our way.

Also, this battery is 4.5 years old, not 5.5 as I stated earlier.

 

[JHZR2]

That voltage is just too low...I don't get it. At 27F it's 75% SOC or so..

It's just not getting charged, or there's a parasitic draw. Have you tested for that?

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted by JHZR2
It's just not getting charged, or there's a parasitic draw. Have you tested for that?
I did. There is no parasitic draw. The car is just not charging the battery, even on longer drives.

But like I said earlier, even my ProLogix charger struggles to charge this battery. It will say the battery is 50% full, but it will not push full 10A current to it. Almost immediately the current dwindles down to about 1-1.5A. My guess is this battery is wonky. Maybe it's severely sulfated? I don't know.

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted by Quattro Pete
Originally Posted by JHZR2
It's just not getting charged, or there's a parasitic draw. Have you tested for that?
I did. There is no parasitic draw. The car is just not charging the battery, even on longer drives.

But like I said earlier, even my ProLogix charger struggles to charge this battery. It will say the battery is 50% full, but it will not push full 10A current to it. Almost immediately the current dwindles down to about 1-1.5A. My guess is this battery is wonky. Maybe it's severely sulfated? I don't know.


How do you know current dwindles down like that? Does the prologix have an ammeter? Mine doesn't.

Are you sure that when this happens, the voltage is up at the 14.4-14.7v range?

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted by JHZR2
How do you know current dwindles down like that? Does the prologix have an ammeter? Mine doesn't.

Clamp meter.

Quote
Are you sure that when this happens, the voltage is up at the 14.4-14.7v range?
14.8V.