Are The Old WFCO CONVERTER FANS VARIABLE SPEED?

It should not be assumed military batteries have the same construction, technique or even design philosophy as consumer batteries. The military inference is to demonstrate the manufacturer has the ability to manufacture a product unique enough to have passed FAA standards and MilSpec standards. This is a lucrative market and I am sure other vendors are trying to break into it.

Manufacturing an AGM with .115" positive plates in an automotive jar is not the easiest task in batterydom. This is what sets this particular vendor apart from other vendors.

You might want to try and establish specifications for other vendor's AGM products. Specifically, positive plate thickness. Are the plates enveloped separated? When Ramcar Battery changed to envelope separators in 1991 for their flooded batteries. RV jar warranties dropped 7% at the receiving dock, according to then president of Ramcar, Mark Daugherty. This man had no bluster to him, at least not when I conversed with him. He was honest and candid and Larry his Filipino/American chief engineer was fun to work with. Many of Ramcar's batteries came from the Philippines and the vendors I represented agreed with Mr. Daugherty that the made in Philippines batteries had 60% less warranty claims than the made in USA Ramcar battery. Everyone was mystified. I hypothesized climate had a significant role in the disparity. The extraneous manufactured battery turned out to be made in 30C and 65% R/H conditions. Up went the temperature and humidity and length of time spent in the greening room, and down went the open batch time for plate paste material. The disparity was narrowed significantly. Mr. Daugherty gifted me an open purchase with US battery. I drove away with 24 L-16 batteries. Their sale help fund my Captain Gizmo pulse charging futility.

MEX wrote:
One thing to keep in mind is the Concorde has .115" positive plates with 62% plate separating distance of most other VRB.

Hmmm ... putting on my mechanical engineer's (which I'm not) hat on ... it seems as if usage in high speed aircraft would dictate large as practical/possible spacing of electro-mechanical components that must be kept separated ... not reduced spacing.

Of course I get that Lifeline was maybe trying to maximize battery energy density per unit of battery volume, while at the same time trying to maintain battery resistance to vibration and motion forces. Maybe that's why they used closer spacing and hence wound up with lower float voltages. :h

As we all know, the Optima AGM batteries use another structure to absolutely maximize battery resistance to vibration and motion forces ... at a cost in battery energy density per unit of battery volume.

I would be hard to convince that long-term 13.2 volt floating would be harmful unless temps drop to less than 0C. But I would be the first to agree that underhood battery temperatures in excess of 50C would negatively impact any battery maintained in excess of 13.8 volts. Because of 0% antimony factor the AGM can chemically tolerate a wider temperature and voltage range.

Because of a myriad of customer abuse profiles different manufacturers decide to minimize warranty claims in different ways. For the last ten to twelve years I have been dealing with customers whose batteries have lost capacity because of erroneous charge profiles when their voltage regulator "setting" was on AGM. There is rarely "floating" on a sailboat even though voltage regulators have such a phase.

Do you remember the era when voltage regulators forbade anything other than rote recharge profiles? No increased voltage permitted. And absorbed glass mat manufacturers screamed nothing but DO NOT ATTEMPT TO EQUALIZE THIS BATTERY! ??

Conditioning did not exist. Well, your's truly got on the telephone and fought my way through several layers of battery corporate "Application Engineers" and informed genuine engineers their batteries were losing capacity because of chronic undercharging. One of the odysseys was detailed on this forum with a spiral cell AGM battery manufacturer.

Isn't it a wonder that a dozen years ago I coined the term "conditioning charge" to differentiate controlled overcharge of an AGM battery from equalization of a flooded battery, and now in AGM format we have "conditioning" as a commonly used AGM maintenance term?

That isn't the point. Errors in recharge protocol is. One of the shortcut ways to alleviate chronic undercharging is to increase float voltage by three or four tenths of a volt. When is the last time you saw a pushbutton AGM conditioning charge (a charge profile specific for AGM) on a charger or converter? How old is the charger? Newer chargers may have this feature. Older chargers did not.

This is why properly managing an AGM is NOT A PIECE OF CAKE. When heavily cycled and chronically left undercharged an AGM battery loses capacity and it is not a slow process. Capacity testing is the only valid method to determine if a VRB has been mistreated and has therefore lost capacity.

Subjecting an AGM to 13.6 volts rather than 13.2 volts will not negatively impact battery lifespan, even when left on float charge 24/365. Conversely a battery maintained at 13.2 volts will not negatively impact an AGM battery UNLESS IT HAS BEEN MISTREATED. You fingered the battery when in fact it is a float voltage that has been increased to attempt to compensate for chronic undercharging that is the lynchpin.

So, does this say the LIFELINE would be better off at 13.6 volts than it would be at at 13.2 float? Yes. If chronic undercharging is present. And unfortunately it usually is. Few sailing vessels I have boarded did not have chronically undercharged AGM batteries. Sure the problem would have been lessened had the batteries seen a compensated 13.6 float voltage, but sailing vessels are particularly vulnerable to charge then shut off the engine.

Unless and until I see the lifeline with a lower impedance become negatively impacted by a 13.2 volt float setting, the issue of 13.6 or 13.8 versus 13.2 is a moot point for this battery. You said it yourself, chargers and converters are all 13.6 - 8 these days. Concorde should change their manual to eliminate quibbling.

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
I may be missing your idea about a lower float voltage value affecting the desirability of the battery. Could you elaborate your point?

When my RV's original OEM Group 24 wet batteries failed I paid a small upgrade charge to have them replaced with AGM batteries, but I did not think it wise financially to also replace a perfectly good stock 13.8 volt converter just to have to properly float the new AGM batteries if the right AGM batteries could be found.

So I chose AGM batteries that would not be damaged by the stock converter being hooked up to them day after day, week after week, year after year.

As it turns out, Lifeline seems to be the odd man out with their recommended 13.2 float voltage value ... as I notice that "most" AGM batteries seem to have recommended float voltages in the 13.5 to 13.8 range. It's as if the design of most AGM batteries was targeted to the very common fixed voltage converters that wind up in so many recreational vehicles with their ~13.8 volt output. I even notice that my Ford's RV alternator seems to "settle in" after warmup to this same 13.5-13.8 volt range.

That makes me wonder what came first ... the common converters' and alternators' ~13.5-13.8 volt output chicken ... or the common AGM batteries' ~13.5-13.8 volt float egg.

I don't know where Lifeline got their 13.2 volt float design idea from. Maybe because their (targeted?) military market already had multi-stage charges installed everywhere so Lifeline figured they'd better crack that market from the get-go with a 13.2 volt float voltage product.

I guess if you're already the owner of a multi-stage charger that settles down around 13.2 volts for it's float value and you want to go AGM, you better go with Lifeline if you don't want to risk the gradual distruction you get with long term under-voltage floating of your new AGM battery(ies). ;)

Let's hope Concorde has their act together: Every F15, B2, F22 and F34 flying has Concorde batteries. One thing to keep in mind is the Concorde has .115" positive plates with 62% plate separating distance of most other VRB. This changes the dynamics of cell impedance, and that changes the characteristics of electrical values in both charging and depletion. I may be missing your idea about a lower float voltage value affecting the desirability of the battery. Could you elaborate your point?

I did not write the point about differential voltages between extended float and suddden maximum absorbsion for fun. This is a valid point of corroboration in establishing a float voltage set point for any storage battery. But it is especially important when battery chemistry is occult.

Mex,

I assume that Lifeline's engineering did something like what you say years ago before publishing product documents recommending 13.2 float volts for their AGM products.

(Well ... if not Lifeline's engineering ... then Lifeline's marketing. :B )

That's a curious idea for making ineligible a certain line of VRB.

Would not a more pragmatic approach be more appropriate? Maintain the accumulator on float for a week or two at 13.2 volts, then initiate a bulk charge voltage and note the amount of amperage needed to achieve absorbsion max limit? This would would certainly reveal an inappropriate float voltage value? This methodology is also valid when applied on any type of storage battery. A very simple algorithmic conclusion.

Mex wrote:
I hope float turns out to be 13.2 volts.

That's one thing I noticed about Lifelines a long time ago and would not ever use them because of their recommended low-for-AGM float voltage.

I prefer the higher 13.5V-13.8V AGM battery float voltage range called for by Trojan, Rolls Surrette, C&D Technologies, and others. :)

Thank you all. Returned to find my Triplett meter flooded by a roof leak and careless removal of a tarp by the landlords. No ammeter. But after I connected the WFCO 55 amp to a brand new Lifeline that had 12.81 volts resting, the WFCO immediately went to 13.74 volts and is staying there. Rock steady. 13.74 volts now for 2 hours. It may be the Lifeline is swallowing everything the WFCO can produce (55 amps) and hopefully before 4 hours is up it will decide to rise to what WFCO calls absorbsion limit - 14.4 volts. If it doesn't, I put a switch on the unit and will cycle it again, and again, and again if necessary. I hope float turns out to be 13.2 volts.

Almost everything I know (including pictures) is in this thread:
http://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/24492263/srt/pa/pging/1/page/1

What I can add is:
(1) The fan is not thermistor controlled. It's controlled by output current sensing. Don't know if that's direct or indirect current sensing.

(2) I suggest using a lower resistance than 47k for the boost trigger. 47k pulls the sense voltage barely to the trigger borderline, and might not trigger boost on some converters.

(3) The reset circuit in the thread is for the level-triggered-reset daughterboards, which I suspect are older, while the newer boards use edge-triggered reset. The edge trigger circuit is to hook a 1k resistor in series with a 1000 pF capacitor. Hook the resistor end to the converter + output, and the capacitor end to pin 4 of the PIC microcontroller. Then hook the reset momentary switch/button from the resistor-to-capacitor connection to the converter's - output. Power cycling the converter also causes a reset.

I thought the fans were variable speed, but it's been a while and my memory reliability is getting worse every day. I've run across only 2 versions of the daughterboard, could be more of course.