Thursday, Mar 02, 2006 at 22:49
My father has a small collection of about 10 lead acid batteries at his house(
well...some are
mine! )1 Calcium and 1 AGM (a very old Odessy).
Most had been sitting for years, and possibly died due to extremely low voltage....
But none have come good with the desulphating zapper I made from the JayCar kit.
In fact the Calcium battery appears to be OK(I didn't zap this), good voltage and good current when tested with the 'cheap and nasty' battery load tester, but will not crank his 60series diesel!
The AGM gives good voltage and load, and will only just crank the diesel.
Maybe one of the standard SLA batteries may be coming good....but it seems to be a very slow process.........So far it's been about 2months!
Overall I'd say money
well spent on the zapper, (I love a challenge!!) and worth the effort to realise that a battery is DEAD!!
I'm in two minds about the battery load tester (from SuperCheap).
It cost around $60-70, it does a load
test on the battery with an internal heating element, and instantaneously indicates how many volts the battery has under this load. The tester get very hot if used more than 20 seconds!
of the 12 batteries tested so far only three have been accurately indicated by this tester. All the others failed the real
test.
It sometimes says that the battery is good, when in fact it won't perform it intended function!
The battery collection consists of various 7-12 Ah 12 volt, for powering the kids(his grandchildren) electric vehilcles, 3 or so car batteries, a couple of 70ZZ's and 1 deep cycle 70ZZ @ 120Ah.
The main charger used to rescusitate the batteries is my 20Amp Arlec charger, and some are kept on a float charge with a 4 amp 'lil tacker.
ps. If you buy the Zapper KIT, there are some fiddly bits when it comes time to screw the completed PCB board to the the supplied case.
You may need several longnosed very slim pliers, or the 4 machine screws supplied to do this job, should be replaced with ones of double the length.
good luck with it! :))
AnswerID:
158222
Follow Up By: MartyB - Thursday, Mar 02, 2006 at 23:00
Thursday, Mar 02, 2006 at 23:00
Thanks for the reply.
I didn't realise they had a kit, what I am looking at is pre assembled. I will go & have a look.
from Marty.
FollowupID:
412599