"T i m" wrote in message
news
Hi All,

With recent talk of solar battery charging and motorcycle battery
chargers etc I was looking about to see if anyone had an affordable
solution for testing realistic battery capacity out there.

I seemed to keep Googling the IBT-Gold (and Red / Blue) devices and
wondered if anyone had actually used one in anger and what did they
think please?

http://www.actmeters.com/Gold-IBT-2.php
(no connection etc (no pun intended either g))

I'm not sure if I actually understand how it works (the description
looks a bit vague to me) but that may not matter if it actually works
in practice.

They are quite expensive (to me anyway) but with some replacement
motorcycle (and car / golf buggy) batteries now up round the £100 mark
and being involved in that sort of thing with 4 cars, 6 motorbikes and
numerous Leisure / other batteries etc it could be considered an
investment?

There have been many times when a battery might appear to do it's
thing, maybe after a good bench charge etc but it would be (very) nice
to know what it's actual capacity is (other than by doing a
conventional C20 discharge test etc).

Cheers, T i m


I have one of the meters you link to, bought cheap(er) on ebay some time
ago.

I've used it with gel-cell batteries as used in UPSs, car batteries and
leisure batteries, and find it gives an accurate picture of the battery, and
often confirms what I suspect for a battery strugging to start a car etc.
Certainly a new battery gives a far heigher reading that an old one - seems
the meter is doing what it should.

To me it's been a good 'investment', certainly useful to have in the garage.

Alan.