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Edward Morris Edward Morris is offline
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Default Automotive battery charging

I bought my Craftsmen riding mower in 2005. Just started it up again for
this season with full cranking power. The battery is the original battery
that came with the mower a Diehard. I do keep the mower in our basement
when it's not in use. 7 years not bad for a mower battery.

Eddie

"Cydrome Leader" wrote in message
...
mike wrote:
On 3/27/2012 4:59 AM, klem kedidelhopper wrote:
I'm having a discussion on another group with someone about battery
charging. I often charge my batteries including automotive off my
bench power supply. He was telling me that smooth regulated DC is not
the best thing to use for charging batteries. He said that half wave
rectified unfiltered DC will prevent the growth of "dentrites" that
can eventually extend and short out the plates. This is the first I've
ever heard of this. Does anyone have any further insight on this? Lenny


The dendrite thing is what shorts sealed NiCd batteries.
"burp charging" is said to reduce that problem.


there are a variety of "desulfator" gadgets for lead acid batteries.

Here's what I've learned about lead acid batteries.

- small ones suck and die in a few years, no matter how you baby them
- big ones last longer and are expensive to replace.
- more and more batteries are from china and just pure crap.

that's really it. They all go bad in the end, usually when you need them.

I blew up my set of UPS-270 batteries by charging them on a charger that
failed with the series regulator going dead short.

They just replaced several tons of UPS batteries at work. Some of the
batteries were only months old, but they're still all going back to the
smelter as part of the trade in agreement. I tried to buy back the new
ones from the guys loading up the pallets, but they didn't want to get
fired, and somebody does count them up.