Charging the Lifelines questions

JiminDenver wrote:
Yahoo

The second conditioning charge brought the low battery up to 13.1v after a 24 hr rest. I redid the top charge on the other two and am waiting to see how they settle too.

My question is how much of a difference can there be? I may end up with three batteries with slightly different voltages, off by .01-.02v from each other since I am working on them separately.

I REALLY want to use the full bank and not have the hassle of separate banks. Two 8-D's would be acceptable had I not used all three and seen what they can do. No more waiting for the sun or needing the solar to boost the bank, just push the dang button and it will be ok.

A read in the Odyssey instructions clearly states that 3 full attempts at equalizing, with OCV being measured in between each attempt after 24 hours might very well be necessary to clean up and bring a battery up to full voltage. What it sounds like is you are doing a brute force electrolysis cycle event to suck all the sulfur off the plates and back into acidic solution, and that it takes rest time in between for solution to penetrate minute nooks and crannies, such that it can take more sulfur into battery acid solution. This is heavy duty elbow grease brute force cleaning of the residue left on the plate, due to incomplete recharge cycles. They recommend doing so every 10 partial recharge cycles.

The best means of avoiding this is to get your battery top charged almost every single day, completely topped up, pretty much like you do with a car battery if doing longer drives with the alternator.

The brute force is where a big amp capacity power supply unit controlled manually comes in, you need those big amps with an AGM battery. It explains why the alternator has such high capacity on my AGM battery for my VW Touareg TDI diesel, the battery takes it at that rate, and has to, to maintain battery longevity.