greenrvgreen wrote:
rjxj--
Based on Mex's and Niner's recommendation I bought a Meanwell, and I found the fit and finish to be VERY high quality. The pictures do not do them justice--their cases are silky polished aluminum and very cool looking.
In testing it I found the performance exceeded the published specs by a good margin. And if you're the least bit handy with a Meter and a screw driver, you can easily operate these as a manual smart charger, only smarter (hopefully). So I highly recommend the Meanwell.
Mex and his Cohorts have since moved on to the MegaWatt, and from there to this current item. Their main insterest in this seems to be that the only reviews they could find online were negative, so they had to buy one and prove everybody wrong. Thus the talk about bigger fans, pots, whatnots. I suspect there's going to be an online hat passed once the cost of this project passes the thousand-dollar mark.
The reason I asked is because I bought the 40 amp model in the link I posted. I paid far more than $23.00 but dont really care about that. it's just another gadget or toy to me. I may buy a Meanwell someday or I may buy another $425.00 Quick Charger.
I was on here months ago when I came to the realization that a converter would never work for what I'm doing. I dont think they or I are out to prove anyone wrong. All I'm out to do is be my own power company and it wont happen with a converter and a generator.
Early on I bought what I call a real battery charger. I bought a battery charger called Quick Charger. Its 12 volts, 50 amps and weighs 36 pounds. It's mounted and fused/wired to my heavy wiring terminal strip. It has dip switches so it can be set for gel, AGM, or wet. Wet also having settings for deep or shallow cycling.
The reason PD4655 wont work for me is because with being on a generator I have to be able to charge my 4 6 volts quickly. The converters wont do it. That's where these guys, mainly Mr Mex I believe, came up with the power source idea. I have tried mine and was amazed that this little box can crank out the amps and volts that it does.
I feel my PD4655 is a great product IF IF IF I'm plugged into shore power. It also may be ok if I went out for a long weekend and ran my generator a few times and made it through without getting full charges.
So I still have my PD4655 and my Mega Watt. I did a charge session with my PD it was putting out 40 amps at 14.4 boost volts. When the amps started to tapper off I turned it off and turned on the MW and ran the voltage up to 15.2 This is what gets the battery charged more quickly. Is the battery life reduced? Maybe? Do I care? No, in fact I may want the overall battery life to be reduced because the price of that reduced life may be less than the wear on a $2,300 generator, the fuel, the trips for fuel and value we all place on less noise. There is no blue print for everyone one to follow so we all throw ideas in here and try to figure out what will work for us.
If I want fast battery charging using my gen I think there are 2 ways.
1. Have a real battery charger or even 2 of them.
2. Modify your converter and/or also use a power supply or even 2 of them.
This $23.00 gizmo may be fine for some people because it still does what a converter wont. 15.3 volts and SG that will come up more quickly. If it's tweaked to the max I would guess its life may be shortened but it's like playing in the sandbox. Anybody got any firecrackers?
