-=dwh=- wrote:
...Voltage regulated alternators (~constant voltage charging systems) aren't really designed to charge batteries at all. They are designed to supply and maintain a more or less steady bus voltage, while supplying whatever loads happen to be drawing down the bus... (and much more)
A detailed and insightful post -=dwh=-. Thank you for that. :C
I have been active for some years now, on an ATV forum where part of the shared issues that forum members have dealt with are early battery failures.
The manufacturer (Suzuki) supplied their machines to dealers as crated near-finished assemblies, for final assembly and activation in the retail dealers shop. This includes activating the dry-shipped AGM battery.
The shops would generally give the rote duty of final assembly (swing up and tighten handlebars, fill oils, activate battery) to the least senior least experienced or least competent guy in the shop, and this guy would often activate the battery by squeezing the electrolyte into the cells as fast as he can, creating plate bubbles, giving it no time to absorb into the mat but immediately slapping it onto the automobile battery quick-charger for an hour.
Likewise, when the frustrated owner comes back in three months for a new battery because his won't hold a charge anymore, then the guy at the parts counter would take his battery order and tell him to come back in an hour for his battery.
In that hour the parts man will have done the same thing, shot the electrolyte into the battery and slapped it onto the quick charger. Then he hands the customer his nice fresh hot battery, and see you later. (in another three months or so)
Not that all shops or dealers have been doing this, but many have.
We have adopted the practice of insisting that any new AGM battery must be handed over in its sealed box, unmolested by the dealer or any of his cronies! The battery is then activated at the buyers home, by inverting the electrolyte bottle array over the battery and puncturing the foil covered bottlenecks in the prescribed fashion and letting the electrolyte drizzle into the cells at its own rate.
Then the battery is left alone for a couple of hours for the electrolyte to absorb into the mat.
Then it is charged at a low rate, with a smart charger at its low 2 amp rate or with a 1.5 or 2 amp battery maintainer (Tender) for eight or ten hours.
Activated in this fashion an AGM battery in this application lasts for years. Seven and counting for my present one. :)
It's sounding plausible that a stepped charge protocol, involving higher early voltage and progressive lesser voltage steps as the battery achieves greater potential, would do a bit better job than straight low amp long time charging...
But again we are looking to help Joe suburban weekend wrencher to get the most out of his machine, certainly to help him do an end run around the actual harm that less than fully competent shop mechanics or parts counter staff can cause. He probably has,(and certainly ought to have if he doesn't), a battery tender to use when his ATV is parked. If he can use that to safely activate his new battery, and doing so costs him .0025% of his battery's full capacity in so doing due to a bit of sulfation, then it's cheap at the price, especially when compared to what the donkey at the parts desk might have done!
Until makers start supplying their AGM batteries already activated, like Odyssey and Optima do, the chance that someone out of your sight will like as not activate and charge your nice new AGM battery the same way Grandpa charged the six volt Exide battery in his DeSoto and wreck it, is just too great.
Thanks again.
Whoops, swinging a bit off topic here, sorry. I sure like my Champion 2000i inverter charger though. :B
