Better way to check battery SG?
I keep thinking there must be a better way to check battery SG. A good hydrometer is almost ideal, the issue I keep having is the top of the float wanting to rest on the glass making repeatable measurements problematic.
Well, finally decided to do some looking and may have found a better way, not necessarily less expensive, but at least much more repeatable and just as easy.
A battery refractometer. Refractometers are a pretty common way to check coolant concentrations and make sure your DEF fluid is at spec.
Turns out there many available that will do battery SG and Coolant concentrations. I settled with one from RobinAir, prices vary all over the place, RobinAir seems to be a good company.
Now for the test.... I recently did testing on my 10 year old set of Trojan GC batteries with my Frieze hydrometer, Cells were all pretty consistently high, problem was if I did repeated measurements on a given cell, it would read between about 1.275 and 1.300 depending on how the float rested.
With the Robins, repeated measurements were dead on, never varied even 0.001 And, with the 4 batteries lowest SG was 1.298, (2) highest was 1.301 (1), the rest were at 1.300
Test method was to do a full charge with my PD charger, then I topped off all the cells with water from my battery watering jug which stops at a fixed level, did another top charge
Probably took less time than using a hygrometer with a float and is more repeatable.
Now if Mex is still around like to get his take on using a refractometer vs. hydrometer for measuring SG.
Well, finally decided to do some looking and may have found a better way, not necessarily less expensive, but at least much more repeatable and just as easy.
A battery refractometer. Refractometers are a pretty common way to check coolant concentrations and make sure your DEF fluid is at spec.
Turns out there many available that will do battery SG and Coolant concentrations. I settled with one from RobinAir, prices vary all over the place, RobinAir seems to be a good company.
Now for the test.... I recently did testing on my 10 year old set of Trojan GC batteries with my Frieze hydrometer, Cells were all pretty consistently high, problem was if I did repeated measurements on a given cell, it would read between about 1.275 and 1.300 depending on how the float rested.
With the Robins, repeated measurements were dead on, never varied even 0.001 And, with the 4 batteries lowest SG was 1.298, (2) highest was 1.301 (1), the rest were at 1.300
Test method was to do a full charge with my PD charger, then I topped off all the cells with water from my battery watering jug which stops at a fixed level, did another top charge
Probably took less time than using a hygrometer with a float and is more repeatable.
Now if Mex is still around like to get his take on using a refractometer vs. hydrometer for measuring SG.
