HF Battery testers
I have a bunch of car/truck batteries sitting around in my shop and I want to test them so I can recycle the bad ones and use the good ones for a rare non-electric-hookup 3 day campout with our TT. ...
Forum Discussion
subcamper wrote:
A few of the batteries are from vehicles that we got rid of and removed the battery. Some of the batteries are only a few years old. Right now I need to weed them out.
Steve
Doesn't matter, really.
You ARE spinning your wheels in the first place.
YOUR "goal" that you stated was to "camp" for THREE DAYS.
To do that with AUTOMOTIVE STARTING BATTERIES you WILL need to drag along at least THREE of them and that most likely will not be enough.
Do yourself a huge favor, SCRAP them by using them as a core towards BETTER SUITED batteries.
Alternately, advertise them on Craigslist for $25 each then put the money towards getting deep cycle batteries..
Yes, you can use a tester, but still in the end you will have batteries designed for a high current draw (starter)for a few seconds then quickly recharged. These types of batteries tend to do a very poor job for lower and longer discharges.. A typical group 24 size starting battery will only have 60ah-70ah of capacity, but using more than 20% of that battery WILL destroy the capacity, especially if that battery sits for three days partially discharged..
I understand the idea of being frugal, but sometimes you have to pony up and get the RIGHT TOOLS FOR THE JOB.
