Sunday, Jan 05, 2014 at 00:11
If you are at all concerned about the condition of your battery, you need to
test it properly under known conditions and with a known load.
When you have the time, take it out of the vehicle and get it fully charged with a known good charger.
Check the terminal voltage immediately you take it off charge and over the next 24 hours.
If you do not have a "proper battery tester".
Improvise yourself a load...one or two 100 watt
driving lights and a reasonably accurate clock, used with your multimeter will surfice.
This will allow you do do a number of tests.
You should be able to get a full spec sheet for your battery off the manufacturers web site.
AND as others have mentioned, you are bleep in the wind if you are not measuring directly at the battery terminals.
As another matter...you can use your multimeter to
check the voltage drops in your wiring.
ALL too often, wire used is too light.
cheers
AnswerID:
523898
Follow Up By: Sigmund - Saturday, Jan 11, 2014 at 21:34
Saturday, Jan 11, 2014 at 21:34
Laboriously I did a load
test like this with my two 100 amh Hour CT batteries, following instructions on the ABR Sidewinder site. Running down to 50% SoC showed 70% of orig. capacity. In practice with our normal load (other things equal) that meant no more than 24 hours of power compared with the new batteries' 5-6 days.
Well, we'd had nearly 5 years out of those units (20 weeks in the bush) so nothing to complain about.
Except the cost of replacing them.
FollowupID:
805903