Trojan T-105 battery charging tips

[Graham.m]

Fortunately Tommy didn't listen to the siren calls that he should reduce his charging voltage and instead took notice of the GOOD advice he received.

So what is the correct voltage for T to set his charger to today? Interestingly his charger compensates for temperature and the 14.8 cycle at these temperatures sets the voltage to 15.1V. That was the voltage mentioned in my notes.

[nicknorman]

I wonder how many have changed there minds about buying a smartgauge.have merlin yet confirmed it needs calibrating as im sure i read somewhere that the meter can be out while charging or discharging ,i may have dreamt that though

If you look at the link I posted to the spec, you'll see that tommy's gauge was way out according to 3 sources, two DVMs and a correlation with SoC measure by hydrometer. The spec quotes absolute max error during discharge of 5%, during charge of 10%, and voltage within 0.5%. If the last one is way out, the others will be out too.

 

Hopefully it doesn't put people off buying one but based on their current quality control, it would be prudent to check the voltage reading against a known good digital voltmeter at the outset. One should not have to do that, of course, and one could use that as an argument not to get one, however provided the gauge is calibrated correctly at the factory it is a very good instrument so it would be the potential user's loss if he were put off by this issue. Once correctly calibrated, the gauge retains the calibration - it is not as if it has to be recalibrated from time to time.

[WotEver]

So what is the correct voltage for T to set his charger to today? Interestingly his charger compensates for temperature and the 14.8 cycle at these temperatures sets the voltage to 15.1V. That was the voltage mentioned in my notes.

Anywhere around that voltage will be fine, edging towards the higher end. I'm surprised you don't know that.

 

At current temperatures he could probably go up to 15.4V (after compensation) but 15.1V will serve him well, as we told him originally, without endangering the battery longevity.

[Paul C]

Thread locked, due to a large amount of bitchiness and general unpleasentness. While it is unusual to lock a thread which hasn't "run its course", its also unusual for a science-based technical topic to become so emotive and drawn out. Apologies to the OP for having to do this, but feel free to start another thread which summarises the situation so far and can focus on the facts rather than emotions or personalities.