Battery Info

[Too many Kubotas]

high pitch whine actually indicates crappy inductor coil potting, but I'm done, Noco is the number one selling charger on the market, I never even heard of pulsertech before this.

Fyi voltage almost means nothing. if you had a 10.9v battery (its shot already) and a 4 amp charger already brought it up to 13.2 and it not taking 10 hours, the battery is sulfated and has no capacity.

Okay, by that logic the Harbor Freight ones should be great. At least I guess that they sell in larger numbers than the NOCO does.

And maybe the manufacturers that use the high frequency method rely on crappy coil potting, but if so, at least that technology seems to work.

Way too early to tell if the PulseTech will take 10 hours or more to do anything, but what I do know is that the battery was testing fine before being subjected to the NOCO.

Also it showed no signs of being sulfated, which makes sense since that battery was either on a PulseTech maintainer when parked, or had a Canadus desulfator attached when the vehicle was driven.

Could it have crapped out in the few days between the last time it was checked and putting the NOCO on it? Sure, anything is possible.

 

[LittleBill21]

So I will be upfront. I am not super strong with oscilloscopes. But I don't want the comments here to scare people from buying a Noco Charger, due to comments about high voltage. I have attached 2 photo's one from a good battery, and one from a bad battery. You just need to look at the highlighted parts. This is using the same charger as Kuboto a Genius 1 amp charger which is tiny.

Long story short on a good 100ah battery. The voltage mean (average) was 13.45 you can see the Min and max values over roughly a 20s capture (this is a zoomed in photo). at no point did it go up near 19v, simply because the battery is in good shape and can absorb all the amperage (1A) the charger can give it. the delta (or difference) due to charging was less then 4mv which is .0x. which is nothing.

This second photo tells a much different story. This is a 7ah lead acid UPS battery that is shot. its resting voltage if you look at the graph and highlighted in yellow is roughly 5.25 volts in this photo.

you can see the noco attempts to put voltage into the battery roughly every second for a second long, which means it "pulses" its charging voltage 60 times a minute.

The issue here is the resistance in the battery due to being sulfated is SO HIGH, the battery won't accept it, and as such the voltage rises till it actually can overcome the resistance and finally the battery absorbs it roughly around 19.84 volts (green highlight)

If I hooked up an amp meter (too tired) you would see 0 amperage going into the battery.

at the end of the day, if your only watching a voltmeter, or just a bulb on the charger, you are given very very little information

resistance test (what digital battery testers use) amp meters, sg meters, load testers, and finally volt meters actually provide a much better insight into what's going on inside of these things.

remember high voltage quickly is bad, it means the resistance is high and as such the voltage climbs till the battery absorbs it.

in a perfect world if we are using this 1 amp charger to charge a flat battery (10.5) which is 55ah(example). Your looking at 55 HOURS to charge it to full. If your taking a 4amp charger (55/4) and its dead your looking at close to 14 hours as well to charge it.

Hope this clears up why we saw the voltage swings we saw on the bad battery, and now we understand what a "pulse" actually is.

EDIT- I should have hooked up the amp meter, it would have shown the pulses into the good battery.

 

[Too many Kubotas]

I've never said that all NOCO products are bad, but it sure looks like I got a bum one.

Now, I could call NOCO and whine, explaining how the Genius 1 ruined a battery, and maybe get a free new one. Or just not ever use the one I have on a good battery again.

Either way I'm out half of a good pair of batteries. Knowing me, I'll do the latter.

Will it take 14 hours to charge a battery? Fine with me, I have no problem giving a battery that (small) amount of time. Not when at least seven BatteryMINDers are in constant, or near constant, use. For charging up a battery I prefer giving it at least 14 days anyway.

 

[RayIN]

I bought a 3/4 amp Noco for my dirt bike as the manual said not to use bigger. When I left something on in my truck, the Optima battery was absolutely dead after about three weeks. I put this charger on it and it took more than three days before it quit charging and went into float. Should be OK if your tractor doesn't use power when not in use.

FYI; I discovered the hard way-dead battery multiple times, that some trailer brake controllers are hot all the time. That doesn't matter if the vehicle is used every day or 2, but not started for a week or more results in a dead battery.
Mine is a 8 yr old Teknosha Prodigy controller. So I merely unplug the controller until it's needed. the company remedied that with later production years.

 

[Too many Kubotas]

FYI; I discovered the hard way-dead battery multiple times, that some trailer brake controllers are hot all the time. That doesn't matter if the vehicle is used every day or 2, but not started for a week or more results in a dead battery.

It's not just brake controls.

Whether it's a simple trailer with only a break-away battery or something with other and larger batteries, as long as the trailer is plugged in without the engine running the batteries are fighting each other.

Then the weaker battery, especially the brake-away ones, will drag down the battery(s) in the tow vehicle.

Had a friend lose three large new Odyssey batteries in his motorhome, because he left his trailer plugged in for three days.

I put a switch on my gooseneck to interrupt the positive connection, making it possible to leave the trailer plugged in while parked.

 

[RayIN]

thats what 99% of them are.

they are nothing more then a ac/dc transformer to a buck converter.

these noco's and everything else all they are doing is using a computer to PWM a higher voltage to "hopefully" break up the sulfication on the plates.

there is no magic here. you need to actually load a battery to keep it healthy, adding load cycler would cost to much.

In my commercial job. those batteries actually load themselves to shut off and recharge (multiple redundant batteries in system ) to find out when they are actually bad.

I have seen people bring batteries back by boiling them, after rolling them down a hill to shake up the acid mixture.

True pulse charger/maintainers are not cheap: Recovery Chargers
The output of pulse chargers ranges between 14.8-16.5 VDC.
Some cheap pulse chargers can have an output of up to 29VDC for 1 second, but must be constantly monitored for excessive heat

 

[RayIN]

It's not just brake controls.

Whether it's a simple trailer with only a break-away battery or something with other and larger batteries, as long as the trailer is plugged in without the engine running the batteries are fighting each other.

Then the weaker battery, especially the brake-away ones, will drag down the battery(s) in the tow vehicle.

Had a friend lose three large new Odyssey batteries in his motorhome, because he left his trailer plugged in for three days.

I put a switch on my gooseneck to interrupt the positive connection, making it possible to leave the trailer plugged in while parked.

It's not just brake controls.

Whether it's a simple trailer with only a break-away battery or something with other and larger batteries, as long as the trailer is plugged in without the engine running the batteries are fighting each other.

Then the weaker battery, especially the brake-away ones, will drag down the battery(s) in the tow vehicle.

Had a friend lose three large new Odyssey batteries in his motorhome, because he left his trailer plugged in for three days.

I put a switch on my gooseneck to interrupt the positive connection, making it possible to leave the trailer plugged in while parked.

not2old was referring to not starting a truck for weeks, not attached to a trailer, as was I.

 

[Too many Kubotas]

Sorry, misunderstood.

Unfortunately, many late model pickups (and cars) have enough battery draw not to start after a week or two, even without being equipped with brake controls.

 

[number two]

A friend works at the local Chevy dealer.
The porter gets a list of vehicles that needs the battery charged for 1 1/2 hours maybe weekly.
Not sure if On-Star or what prompts the request.
Parasitic draw appears to be here for the duration!

 

[not2old]

Sorry, misunderstood.

Unfortunately, many late model pickups (and cars) have enough battery draw not to start after a week or two, even without being equipped with brake controls.

The truck I was referring to is a 1990 F250 which used to be reliably left for two months or more with no problems. This problem is intermittant, and the first thing I learned when towing is to disconnect the trailer plug when stopped if it is going to be more than a few minutes.