Monday, November 3, 2008

Low Batteries

So I setup my chargers today and took a look at the voltages and compared them to my runs and such. And then I took at look at my Depth of Charge chart and realixed the batteries were at 65% when I started my runs this weekend, and were 60% today when I went to charge. It has been really cold this past week and that along will kill off 25+% of power, and I did a few runs with the driveway before this weekend.

So lesson of the day: Always keep these suckers charged! I knew I should have done a charge on Friday, but didn't really get around to it. I hoped to drive it again this afternoon thinking I would have a 2 hour charge, and I even pumped the tires back up. I bet this low state didn't help my tests out at all too.

Update:
I spent about 4 hours charging the batteries and I think I need to do some modifications to some of my chargers. Three batteries charged fine but the other 2 were taking their sweet time. They were also the lowest of the batteries when I bought them. I took them off the charger and later this week I will go back and setup those 2 batteries again and let them do an equalize charge and let them gas a bit.
This is what the battery voltages looked like when I unplugged them and then drove back up the driveway:

Battery 1 - 12.78v
Battery 2 - 12.66v
Battery 3 - 12.83v
Battery 4 - 12.83v
Battery 5 - 12.82v

When I have time I am going to take apart a "good" charger and a "bad" charger to see what settings are different. I believe there are potentiometers than can be adjusted, so I want to make sure all the chargers have the same settings.

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