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Replacing Flooded Leisure Batteries

EmmaJC

By EmmaJC
in Boat Equipment

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Detling Rising Star

Detling

Posted
Posted

Some Battery chargers won't charge a flat battery, they see the 11 volts or whatever, say to themselves this is not enough, and refuse to allow any amps to flow, I understand this is to prevent them overheating trying to charge a failed battery / short circuit.

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blackrose Veteran II

blackrose

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Posted
9 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

I can confirm this is not universally true. My Hankook sealed batts really don’t have any lids at all. Not even any glued down lids.  

Yes I recently bought some Hancock batteries that are completely sealed. Bloody powerful too. Until I installed then I never realised my bow thruster hadn't been working properly for about 5 years. Now I can erode the bank with ease.

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blackrose Veteran II

blackrose

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Posted

If you're replacing sealed batteries with open lead acids (or vice versa) and you're charging from a mains battery charger then check the settings on the charger as sealed and unsealed batteries accept different maximum charging voltages. For this reason you shouldn't really have different domestic & start battery types  being charged from the same charger unless the charger has different battery type output mode selection at each output terminal.

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Chewbacka Veteran

Chewbacka

Posted
Posted
On 13/11/2018 at 07:44, Alan de Enfield said:

I had considered that but when the OP said the problem was with 2 of the 4 LEISURE batteries it just didn't make sense,

 

1) Leisure batteries would not be powering the starter motor

2) How would 2 out of 4 of the leisure batteries be affected ?

 

My feeling is maybe the starter motor is actually the alternator - but still doesn't make sense, and that 2 of the leisure battery bank have develop internal shorts and are failing to get to full charge.

Hopefully when the OP says "they are not getting to green" she is not using the battery 'magic eye' to determine when the batteries are fully charged,

If you read the op posts carefully she didn’t say two were ok and two were no good, she just said that two were so bad her mains charger rejected then.  I used to have an old Halfords charger that would not turn on at a battery voltage less than (from memory) 10v.   So if two batteries were at say 9.9v they would be rejected, whereas the other two if at 10.1v would be charged.  Of course what we don’t know is if they have any usable capacity left, so may need changing anyway.

 

As others have said - Best sort out the undercharging problem before buying more batteries.

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Naughty Cal Veteran II

Naughty Cal

Posted
Posted
14 hours ago, Detling said:

Some Battery chargers won't charge a flat battery, they see the 11 volts or whatever, say to themselves this is not enough, and refuse to allow any amps to flow, I understand this is to prevent them overheating trying to charge a failed battery / short circuit.

One that we have at home will charge a flat battery but it takes it a long time before the lights on the charger activate and show that it is charging the battery. It goes into an extra slow trickle charge mode.

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Tony Brooks Veteran II

Tony BrooksDonate to Canal World

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Chewbacka said:

If you read the op posts carefully she didn’t say two were ok and two were no good, she just said that two were so bad her mains charger rejected then.  I used to have an old Halfords charger that would not turn on at a battery voltage less than (from memory) 10v.   So if two batteries were at say 9.9v they would be rejected, whereas the other two if at 10.1v would be charged.  Of course what we don’t know is if they have any usable capacity left, so may need changing anyway.

 

As others have said - Best sort out the undercharging problem before buying more batteries.

That gives a potential way forward. Connect a good battery and a bad one  pos to pos & neg to neg and then put the charger on the pair. the good one wit attempt to charge the bad one, the apparent voltage of the bad one ill rise and maybe the charger will then activate. Next morning take the "good" one away to recharge later and keep on charging the bad one.

 

The other way is to see if an elderly friend/relative has a very old fashioned charger (often with a meter on the front). That won't care what voltage is in the battery but just keep an eye on it and stop charging if the battery warms up or if the voltage goes above about 14V for a sealed battery. Then revert to a modern charger set to sealed.

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Momac Veteran

MomacDonate to Canal World

Posted
Posted
8 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

The other way is to see if an elderly friend/relative has a very old fashioned charger (often with a meter on the front). That won't care what voltage is in the battery but just keep an eye on it and stop charging if the battery warms up or if the voltage goes above about 14V for a sealed battery. Then revert to a modern charger set to sealed.

Why does it have to be an elderly friend or relative? What age is defined as elderly?

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Tony Brooks Veteran II

Tony BrooksDonate to Canal World

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, MartynG said:

Why does it have to be an elderly friend or relative? What age is defined as elderly?

Because the chances of a younger one having an old transformer/rectifier type charger are pretty slim unless they inherited it from an elderly person. Lest say someone who was motoring before about 1970 or so.

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Momac Veteran

MomacDonate to Canal World

Posted
Posted
13 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

Because the chances of a younger one having an old transformer/rectifier type charger are pretty slim unless they inherited it from an elderly person. Lest say someone who was motoring before about 1970 or so.

Yes I did get your drift. I think a lot of people who are not old will still have one of the old types of charger. I am fairly sure my old charger is one I bought from Halfords. And I am not elderly. ?

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Chewbacka Veteran

Chewbacka

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2 minutes ago, MartynG said:

Yes I did get your drift. I think a lot of people who are not old will still have one of the old types of charger. I am fairly sure my old charger is one I bought from Halfords. And I am not elderly. ?

I’m over 60 and have dumped my old charger sometime ago.  Does that make me young again??

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WotEver Veteran II

WotEverDonate to Canal World

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11 minutes ago, MartynG said:

The petrol engined Ford model T in 1908 put an end to electric vehicles available at the time ....... according to the interweb.

I was given by my grandfather, who was a mechanic, a three volume “Book of car electrics” with the foreword written by Sir Herbert Austin. It was written in 1924 and contains blueprints of the electrics for every car available at that time. Herbie wrote that with the instant acceleration and high top speeds available from electric cars there would probably be a great future for them. I don’t think he expected it to take a century. 

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