Walmart Battery Comparison

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Battery acid tends to stratify - a little - During heavy recharging but that does not have any negative consequences to either the battery or the recharge. The total time of the battery being stratified is limited to a half an hour or hour or so. Big deal. for a long time on this forum I have been harping about charging the batteries until slight bubbling in the cells is noted this is for a reason. The bubbling is an indicator that the electrolyte is mixed and is stopping and reversing any stratification that may have formed.

creating a charging profile that allows the electrolyte to bubble before stopping the absorbtion charge is desirable. In fact it is mandatory for optimum battery life. Most battery smart chargers have inflexible charge profiles. This point is precisely why I am so adamant about performing periodic Top Charging cycles. Letting a smart charger undercharge a battery to the point of unequal specific gravity readings between cells is a sorry way to maintain a battery. You will pay the price.

And please keep in mind a battery that is deeply cycled many times is a different animal from a battery that is infrequently cycled to 60 or 70 percent level of charge.

I have come across many wacky suggestions for charge profiles in various forums columns articles and websites. Most of them feed the ego of the author and ignore the reality of proper electro-chemical battery management.

The day that a plug n play battery charger has arrived is the same day somone will announce they have figured out a plug and play automatic algorithm for raising a child.

Spending 10-minutes per month managing a bank of batteries is a patherically small amount of time to ask for. Sort of like asking a driver to please periodically divert his eyes from texting to watching the road.

I wonder if that stratification during bulk is part of the explanation for the severe "progressive capacity loss" I got doing several 50-90s in a row. Not only is a 50-90 an "incomplete recharge" it stops before SG catches up at the end.

As noted in the previous post about the 27DCs, I had a hard time getting them back to 100% after some 50-90s. (Remember all that tipping up on end and so on I posted about back then?) There was much speculation at the time if the progressive losses were from stratification or sulfation. Progressive capacity loss also happened doing 50-90s with 6s, not just 27DCs, but the 6s were easy to "recover" since they gas so much and the 27DCs hardly showed any bubbles. Now we have the "Screwy 31" story on "recovery" which shows what the 27DCs would also need.