On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:42:58 -0400, "Stormin Mormon"
wrote:

Well, lets see. Now, lets look at the "irrelevant" factors, during a
series charge as you seem to prefer.

We start charging. About an hour later, the battery #4 in the line is
fully charged. We continue to pump in the two amp charge.

Hour two. Battery #3 is now fully charge. Battery #4 has been over
charged for the last hour, and is losing water as it electrolyzes to
hydrogen and oxygen.

Hour three. Battery #2 is fully charged. Battery #3 is rapidly losing
water. Battery #4 is nearly dry. Candidly, I think you are mistaken.
You forget, series charging of a string of batteries is NOT constant
current. It is constant voltage - and the current looks after itself.
And I am NOT mistaken. I worked in the automotive field for many
years, and the batteries in the warehouse were allways recharged every
couple of months with the old Tungar battery charger - which was set
to the proper VOLTAGE for the series string, and after several days of
charging all the batteries were fully charged, and evenly charged. If
someone miscalculated and set the voltage too high, they were all hot
and gassing.

Generally we recharged at 2.3 volts per cell for a day or two, then
2.4 volts for another hour to 3 hours, depending on temperature etc.
Hydrometer testing of one or two batteries in the string told when the
batteries were fully charged - or simply checking to see that all the
cells in a battery were gently and evenly bubbling.

If you charge in parallel and one battery is partly shorted (Low
resistance) it hogs all the power and overheats, while the rest of the
batteries get virtually nothing - and if the charge is not high enough
for that scenario, the bad battery drains all the good ones.