Well the short of it, the voltage test over 2, 4 and 24 hours on a fully charged and totally unhooked set of battery - resulted in the validation of only one thing.
None of the battery cells are shorted or bad.
Ending voltage at 24 hours, very minor reduction from the 2 hour mark, are:
6.48 / 6.46 / 6.49 /6.45 - All considered fully charged via Lifeline data info.
Talking with Lifeline Tech Support about 3 1/2 hours ago, we discussed:
-Bank, or some of the batteries, could still be heavily sulfated
-They would send me a machine to do the Deep Recovery process if I wanted
-No way to tell if it would help. And if it did, how much longer I could get out of the bank
-Even though outside of warranty period, they offered me assistance on a new bank
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So I reflected on the variables of chancing the recovery and then hopefully going on with this bank longer. But if 7, 9 whatever months down the road they went belly up - good chance it would be too far out of the warranty period to get as much assistance on replacement.
I also looked at the out of pocket expense to go to Lithium. Plus mod's to the coach to do so, and with what the DW and I have on our years expenditures ahead on a retirees budget. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to say thank you Lifeline, and go up next week and give them my batteries, and get the new ones with assistance. Sure is the KISS approach, and gets it done.
The Tech Support gent also said he would play with my bank, and by somethings do in sort of a post mortem way, would be able to give me some indication of what I did to the bank. And that would then allow me to change my maintenance practices with more information.
By the way, I mentioned the input from some of you on this board, and also form some private emails and PM's... And he said he was complementary and would not argue with the input. So that I felt was a confirmation of the assistance that has been provided.
I will weight these existing batteries when pulling them out.
A postive on waiting longer on the lithium, is I'll learn more before then. And tech changes and costs drop while I'm doing so. My friend is also more then willing to take a well cared for (He stressed that:)!) few year old bank of L16's from me - of course at a bargain. So, this does not mean I have to with until the new bank needs replacement.
Think this is the right move for me...
Best, and thanks again to all,
Smitty
