Battery Charging

   / Battery Charging #11  
I keep a bottle of baking soda solution in the shop to neutralize acid when cleaning out battery trays; I suppose it would work for faces too....

The Baking soda solution may be harmful to the eye's due to its high PH. :D

One get the proper eye wash bottles.
 
   / Battery Charging #12  
1) Buy and keep the eye wash bottles. They are the right pH and have a preservative in them so they will last for 10 years sitting around.

2) Have a box of baking soda handy. It's eye wash for your tractor. Related topic: Everyone has a small dry chemical fire extinguisher handy, yes?

3) Lakeside's post = eye protection needed. Always.

4) Transit refers to this, but have not seen it explicitly posted. When you put more than 13.8 VDC on a lead acid battery, it starts to make hydrogen (electrolysis). So a "tender" is a battery charger with a regulated output voltage that can't "boil the battery".
Some people weld, I throw parts around on circuit boards, so I made a few chargers for my stuff that output 13.75 volts current limited at 5 amps, and you can short them out and feed them an over voltage. So I charge using these and can leave them on when I crank.
My hope with this post is that when people are looking to buy a battery tender, they will have some idea what's going on. You should be able to plug one in, measure the voltage on it, and see less than 13.8 volts.

5) There are fancy things a charger can do to tell you things about your battery, such as bringing the voltage up and measuring current flow into the battery. This is a way you can tell if it's charged. They can also put a small load on the batter and seeing how much the voltage drops. This can tell you if a battery is bad and needs changing. These are little tests that can be done in less than a second, and might be done once a minute or so. I mention them in case anyone sees funny stuff going on when working with a fancy pants charger.

6) Standby lead acid wet batteries (non gell cell) tend to have a slightly shorter life if they just sit around for years than if they are cycled correctly every now and then. My backup generator battery pretty much just sits around on one of my tender-type chargers, so I just change it every 4 years. If I was using it correctly, it would last around 5 years, maybe more.

I've posted on other forums that no one really understands batteries, including me, so YMMV.

Pete
 
   / Battery Charging #13  
I would not put backing soda in my eyes to counter an acid.

1. use an eye wash to flush.
2. no eye wash, use water, lots of water.
3. get to a doctor now.
 
   / Battery Charging #15  
I still have the original battery in my 1999 L2500 so I figure it's overdue for replacement and I''m living on borrowed time. Probably should just change it out but it still seems fine. Lately I've taken to using a 75 watt floodlight in one of those clip on lamps with a reflector. Clamp it to my jack stand facing stright up and put it under the battery and let the heat rise. Should keep the battery a little warmer and cheap enough to do...........
 
   / Battery Charging #17  
I forget to add in my first post one really dangerous thing to do without safety glasses, but something that doesn't look dangerous. Years ago my Dad was doing some landscaping and was pulling out roots by hand. This bunch of roots came loose and flung dirt into his eyes. He never went to doctors and was lucky that he didn't lose his eyesight from the subsequent infection.

Stupid me :mad:, I did the same thing last summer but came out of it with just a scare. I was doing just a bit of yard work and didn`t feel like walking over to the shed to get my safety glasses. Yup, roots came lose and I got dirt in my eyes. Out came the garden hose and I managed to flush the crud out. I should have known better, but I had all the excuses lined up, you know just a two minute job yada, yada.

Anyways, I`ve now sworn to myself, safety glasses, steel toed boots, ear protection, work gloves and that`s just to take a shower....:D
 
   / Battery Charging #18  
Opti-Mist: Yep. I had a carburetor go on the pressure washer (9 HP Honda), just bought a new on on e-bay for the price of a rebuild kit and changed it. Just like when you have battery problems, you just buy a new one.

Stuff I've designed charges batteries, and it took a long time to come up with a good trickle charger and a circuit/software to be able to tell if the battery is dead. Each time I do one of these it gets better. The circuits are different for gel cell and "car" batteries. There are specialty chips for making chargers for nicad and lithium batteries. As people probably know, the lithium are particularly sensitive to what you do to them, and have "spectacular" failure modes.

Note on eye protection: I'm a little complacent because I wear glasses. Current pair has 3 dings on one side. Still get side spatter on occasion. I'm working on forcing myself to put safety glasses over my glasses for some jobs. Have financial incentive of cost of new lenses every now and then.

Pete
 

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