rScotty
Super Member
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2001
- Messages
- 8,258
- Location
- Rural mountains - Colorado
- Tractor
- Kubota M59, JD530, JD310SG. Restoring Yanmar YM165D
The only problem I have with our old (original?) model 12248 Battery Minder is it makes me reluctant to give up and junk old batteries. Even when my old pre-smart "dumb charger" won't charge a battery, sometimes if I leave it on the Battery Minder for a few cycles the battery will recover. Just this week a couple of batteries bound for the recycler seem to have responded to the Minder and now are holding 12.7 volts for several days after being charged. That's a promising sign; but not definitive.
The way to know if the battery is really any good is to load test it over a few hours. I still have to figure out a decent dummy load so I can do a timed discharge. There's no other way I know of to actually check to see how well a battery has taken a charge. I know that the 20hr rate is the standard, but I'm just a tractor guy. And the 20 hr rate means little to me. Since I try never to discharge that completely or at such a high rate, I'm still kicking around what kind of discharge rate would tell me that a battery was worth keeping around.
The way to know if the battery is really any good is to load test it over a few hours. I still have to figure out a decent dummy load so I can do a timed discharge. There's no other way I know of to actually check to see how well a battery has taken a charge. I know that the 20hr rate is the standard, but I'm just a tractor guy. And the 20 hr rate means little to me. Since I try never to discharge that completely or at such a high rate, I'm still kicking around what kind of discharge rate would tell me that a battery was worth keeping around.