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-----Original Message-----
From: corvair@mindspring.com <corvair@mindspring.com>
To: Military Vehicles List <mil-veh@uller.skylee.com>
Date: 14 January 2000 14:26
Subject: Re: [MV] Battery charging question
>The usual recommended charge rate for most lead-acid batteries is 1/10 of the
rated amp-hour capacity. So a 5 amp charger would be about the right size. Now
for the rest of the story:
>
That's the official line, its true.
>The more discharged the battery is, the slower you want to charge. Within
large limits (self discharge rate), you can't charge too slow. If time is not a
factor, I would recommend a 1 amp charge. It'll take 2-3 days to fully charge,
but the battery will be healthier.
>
But on a vehicle the alternator will throw at least 50A at it until it gets to
at least 13.8V.
>Charging at 5 amps, you'll want to take it off charge no more than 8-10 hours
after start. The best way to check is look for a voltage of above 13.2 volts
across the terminals. This means that the battery is as charged as it will get,
and you are now hydrolizing the water in the electrolyte instead of charging the
battery.
>
Battery gassing is normally 13.8V and stand-by units are therefore charged to
13.6V. Vehicle batteries are charged to 14.0 - 14.4V to fully charge. You will
note that modern gas re-combination types are labelled for the charge voltage
not to exceed 14.5V as the re-combination process cannot handle the quantity
produced.
Richard
(Southampton UK)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 21 2000 - 18:15:06 PST