jrnymn7 wrote:
rjxj wrote:
So....I went back and read your first post and then the second post is Mr Mex's hydrometer pic. So, if you start over and get back to sq one and get the SG right in both batteries. Then do your normal use. Forget the amps, just go by the voltmeter and say it gets to 60 percent SOC 12.20. Turn your PM on and let it do it's thing until you hit float. Your SG should be up. If it's not, then the voltage was never high enough? Right?
That's where I was in this whole thing when I started. It would take 2 1/2 days or more to fully charge and raise the SG. I was hitting the boost button too. That's when the dread set in and I bought the quick charge and did a full charge on both batteries in about 8 hours. AND as one of these guys told me "remember that those are new batts and will take several cycles before they perform" and he was absolutely right. After a dozen or more cycles they hold up better and SG comes up faster.
Start over, look at that smallest wire in your battery set up. I dont want to go on about it but if it's 6 g it may matter. Then use it as is and watch your SG after each charge. I just posted about my gr 27 trolling motor battery and it was at what anyone would think was 95 % soc yet the sg was only 1.248.
dont top charge, just use the converter. If it wont do what you want then you need a real battery charger.
Maybe the top charger you were using was on too long or something and boiled out water. There are only so many pieces to this and the hydrometer picture was number one.
yeah i need to take these batts down to a low soc... something i've never done... and with my "normal use" that could take over a week, so i'll have to hit them hard for a couple days, take some sg readings and such, and start over like you say. i've yet to put the 75amper to the test either, so here goes!
and even if the pm does manage to somehow get the sg levels up, it will take about 8 1/2 hours in abs mode to do so, so either way i'm looking at another charger. as i've said, shore power is a luxury seldom available to me, so i gotta get the charge times down and the charge soc up at the same time, without cooking these bad boys.
i really need to see what kind of amps these things will accept just after the pm drops down to abs mode. i'll do what you say and get the soc down, take sg readings, do a boost with the pm, take sg readings, do an abs with the 40amp peak (at 14.6 or 14.8, i forget), take a few sg readings throughout, and then do a float with the pm.
problem is, i've yet to see the peak switch into an obvious abs mode (or float mode)... instead it just plugs along at the 14.6? or 14.8?v level, and then goes haywire at 30 amps. so it could get tricky. i'm thinking it's Vabs set point may very well be the 14.6 or 14.8v setting that it likes to hold at. either way, i'll do my best to keep track of charge times and charge levels throughout. but the whole process shouldn't take more than about 8 hours like you discovered.
NO! :) Mine took about 8 hours using my Quick Charger not my converter. The converter takes days. Just to clarify, Quick Charge is a brand of industrial charger. Early on I also left my bank in series parallel and tried to run both chargers on it at the same time. Problem is unlike others are saying it didn't add the amperage's together. At least it didn't show up that way on my Proggesive Industies EMS which reads 120 line amperage. The Quick Charge which will put out a higher voltage seemed to dominate and make the converter think that it could back off. Niner said to separate the batteries and try it and I did. It then pulled about 22 amps on my 120 line as both chargers were kicking butt separately. As the volts went up the amps walk down.
As all this wihrled around in my head I came to the basic conclusion that as others have said, converters are all crappy. Well to be fair they are crappy....AS BATTERY CHARGERS. I think my PD4655 is a great converter. But I'm a million miles from being an on the teet camper. 40 LED tv, sewing machine, on and on.
So what I rattle on about is the batterires you have, the converter you have and the hydrometer. I beat it into my head by saying WILL this work, YES or NO.
NO, my PD4655 will not do what I want so what was next? A real battery charger and that opens another door. Do you want to flip a switch and the batteries charge or do you want to be out there clipping on a mobile charger? I chose to buy an actual charger so I can flip on a switch but it was $400.00.
Others have good luck with the B&D for $160.00
That's why I say it opens up another door as to how you will do it.
I'm repeating some of this again but I came down to the point of well now it takes X amount of time for my real battery charger to charge both banks. It's far faster than the converter but as niner said, seperate and throw 2 chargers at it because I have the generator amperage. So now it's improved because I can let the Quick Charge do one and run up to 15+ while I bump the converter up to 14.4 with the boost button. When the Quick was done I switched it over to finish the bank that the converter was on.
SO.......now that I took Mr Mex's idea of the Mega, I going to try setting it up to do one bank and Quick Charge the other.
This goes way back to some of the seemingly confusing comments that Mex made about 47 miles to the gas station, listening to the gen, trying to relax in the hammock, burning up fuel, etc.
So I want to throw everything I can at it will out frying the batteries but getting it over with as fast as possible. EVEN if I seemingly waste batteries but actually save money. Down the road when I get a better feel of it all maybe I'll move up to better batteries as Mex mentions also.
