Prodigy Parasite?
A couple of months ago I purchased another vehicle in order to save miles on my towing truck. The truck now sits for long periods without running (charging battery) and I am wondering about parasitic ...
Forum Discussion
MATH!
.050 amperes (per hour) fifty Milli-amps
24 Hours
1.2 amp hours
1 week
8.2 amp hours
1 month
33.6 amp hours
A car battery that has been depleted of 33.6 amp hours
Will still start a car. The owner will never know.
But that battery if left unattended month after month except for starting the car once a month...
Has been cycled HEAVILY. Not the amp hours. Time spent discharged.
Disconnect a battery and the ECU computer loses it's mind until it has been toilet-trained again. There are no free-lunches anymore.
This is where a voltage measurement can be a bit more than purely useless. Purchase a solar panel just large enough to keep the battery maintained. DOUBLE the milliamp output for no workee at night time. Then regulate it to 14 volts max.
But you will have to disconnect a battery lead, the positive, touch the conductor to the engine block to discharge spurious capacitance in 10,000,000 little gizmos, then connect an ammeter set to milliamp scale inline with the positive cable and wait for current to stabilize.
That milliamp figure is your battery bleed down.
An exercise in futility - no one's going to do this :(
.050 amperes (per hour) fifty Milli-amps
24 Hours
1.2 amp hours
1 week
8.2 amp hours
1 month
33.6 amp hours
A car battery that has been depleted of 33.6 amp hours
Will still start a car. The owner will never know.
But that battery if left unattended month after month except for starting the car once a month...
Has been cycled HEAVILY. Not the amp hours. Time spent discharged.
Disconnect a battery and the ECU computer loses it's mind until it has been toilet-trained again. There are no free-lunches anymore.
This is where a voltage measurement can be a bit more than purely useless. Purchase a solar panel just large enough to keep the battery maintained. DOUBLE the milliamp output for no workee at night time. Then regulate it to 14 volts max.
But you will have to disconnect a battery lead, the positive, touch the conductor to the engine block to discharge spurious capacitance in 10,000,000 little gizmos, then connect an ammeter set to milliamp scale inline with the positive cable and wait for current to stabilize.
That milliamp figure is your battery bleed down.
An exercise in futility - no one's going to do this :(
