Interstate is a battery peddler. Among the entire sales force they do not own one engineer. Nada. Zero. Information`except for price, availability and BCI group size is to be regarded with no small degree of skepticism. Fifteen point three volts is inappropriate for a 2.75% antimony lead acid battery.
Equalization is a reactive FORMULA.
Gee if Add a couple extra eggs and bake this cake at 185 degrees for six hours, it otter turn out as good as the 3-egg 350 degrees for 35-minutes recipe. Sulfation is not the easiest thing to remove when it starts to lattice. In fact you never get it all. 99.4% one time, 99.88% the next and the longer the sulfation cures on the plate the harder it is to remove.
If you've got money to burn then so be it. If you want to remove sulfation the best possible way, energy, time and effort wise, pay attention to the BCI formula
Present 5% of rated amp hour current across the cell. Continue until a) sulfate is driven back into solution (acid density rises to original level) Or b) 16.0 volts is reached.
Higher voltage will burn innocent plates, and lower voltage will take forever to never to remove sulfates. The more extreme the deviated values are, the more extreme the consequences.
Interstate wants to sell batteries. They are not going to tell customers reality about equalization, because no charger on the face of the earth can plug and pay the recipe. "Oh but Mr. Interstate, a Snodgrass Platinum ad says 13.5 volts works. I'll choose the Snodgrass Platinum" Ya think maybe the boys that grab the dollars at Interstate would stand for heresy in the P&L column?
Mild sulfation can be removed with mild efforts. But a person does not purchase a cyclable battery to cycle it 20% then immediately recharge it 100%. batteries that leap from power post to power post do not have this issue.
Among others, some OEMs that I trust are Rolls, Trojan, Crown, and Exide industrial. Johnson Controls, Interstate, Sears, and GNB have a spotty history, US Battery is so-so; I've caught them in one too many fundamental technical screwups. Management is responsible for the wogs. An applications engineer who spouts blather gets a boot in my book. They aren't engineers. They are educated salesmen.
"Officer officer you caught me doing 95. The reason, is this road is dangerous and I wanted to spend as little time driving on it as possible"
Salesmen want to be different. To them a "ME TOO" environment is worse than being sent to hades. They need an edge. They itch for a niche, a foothold. So they become unbelievably creative. Heavy on the word unbelievable. When I used to bite these people in the ass I was one really unpopular individual. The engineers at Trojan used to call me a "---- disturber" not because of issues with them but from rumors of my feeding on the competition's corporate salesmen bleeding wounds.
As far as I am concerned it should be mandatory to provide the customer with...
a) weight
b
Interstate does not possess a genuine engineer. They hire (subcontract) one but mainly rely on the manufacturer's engineering employees. Interstate's advertising and promotional division has the reins of the company and are answerable to folks who manipulate spreadsheets for the money men.
"Me Too" is a vile obscenity to resellers. Fits right behind "Here comes a truck with pallets of warranted failures"
15.3 vdc for equalization is valid at 106F electrolyte temperature.
Course a feller could bake a cake at 185F for six hours and call it "Done!"
\\\\ exaggerators.
