Correct care of batteries with SSG's

[jelloir]

I have read a few things on the forum about batteries but just wanted to consolidate them in a thread if possible.

1. Is it ok to start charging a brand new or near new battery with a radiant charge or does it need current to form correctly?
2. You cannot swap a radiant charged battery to the primary until a certain time has elapsed, how long should you wait?
3. Is it ok to mix radiant charge with a current charge from a comparator for example, say half way through the charge?
4. Does charging the battery with radiant and then later charging with a hot charger and back and forth ruin the battery?
5. What's the safest voltage a battery should be discharged to. I read you generally should avoid going below 12.25V.

Those are just some questions I have come up with, if anyone has any experiences they would like to share or sound advise then please share your knowledge for the beginners!

Thanks

James

[wild weasel]

hello james

good idea this topic

just gonna add another one to the list

propper way for reconditioning a old battery lats say with a starting voltage of 5 volts
charge and discharge cycles you recomend

regards
weasel

[guyzzemf]

does it need current to form correctly? i say no
1. i have done that
2. i have always kept run on run side
3. don't know but it if the comparator is acting like a regular charger it will take longer
4.i don't know about back and forth but i have taken many batteries straight off ssg put them in a car/or hot charge then in a car
5. 12.00 is my limit
Weasel
every battery is diff .as to condition that you get it .if battery is a solid SNOW WIGHT its not worth the time too far gone
if after one run if battery rest to 10v it is a dead horse .i think i had one flip back in 3 years
i have done many batteries that started .03v ish [dead] and the first discharges are fast ,and the batteries that were .03v were the best
at coming back DON'T KILL YOUR SELF OVER 0NE BATTERY there is a lot out there
guy
after you do a few batteries you can tell what is going to come back

[John_Koorn]

Thanks Guy,

You've probably brought back more than batteries than anyone else I know.

What method do you use to load the battery you are rejuvenating?

John K.

[guyzzemf]

JOHN K
a mostly used 1157 tail light bulb sometimes 2 bulbs to get a 1- 2 amp draw
it might be a 1206 bulb single filament thay have them a corner store .i seem to drop them a lot when hot
do not let it rest on battery it will melt a hole in battery
guy

[guyzzemf]

all
since you are trying to get a battery to come back to a good DOC [DEPTH OF CHARGE] you don't care about cop so dont play
fair put the biggest battery up front and hammer the s### out of it

[jelloir]

every battery is diff .as to condition that you get it .if battery is a solid SNOW WIGHT its not worth the time too far gone
if after one run if battery rest to 10v it is a dead horse .i think i had one flip back in 3 years
i have done many batteries that started .03v ish [dead] and the first discharges are fast ,and the batteries that were .03v were the best
at coming back DON'T KILL YOUR SELF OVER 0NE BATTERY there is a lot out there
guy
after you do a few batteries you can tell what is going to come back

Have you have much success rejuvenating batteries that have some minor damage in the form of warping?

That's great thanks for the advice Guy. Would still like to hear other SSG builders experience.

[Quigon10101]

SSG can rejuvenate all except physical damage like corrosion, separator pollution / short circuit in plates. A quick check for physical damage in cells is to short the battery poles for not more than 5 to 8 seconds with a thick piece of wire with clamps on both ends and keep an eye on the electrolyte in each cell. If a cell starts to bubble profoundly during the short then it has physical damage which the SSG won't be able to correct. (You do this at your own risk by the way).

Even warped plates are okay and can serve well with radiant charge or even better if you convert them to alum -provided- the warping has not shorted out the cell. The voltmeter test can be misleading.

Yesterday I fixed a large 200 amp-hour battery with help from a friend. I shorted the poles, noticed the bubbles, then took the bad cell out, pulled out a few separators and found them clogged with lead oxide residue, replaced them with new ones, put the cell back in, make connection with molten lead with a gas torch, and the battery is working fine now as part of my solar bank. I had this battery on the SSG for 3 days which took it past 13 volts but it kept failing the load test.

[wild weasel]

hello folks

we have been away for 3 days but kept the system running
now we put the battery witch was on the charge on discharge but it lasted only 15 minutes on a load of 9 amps (20c rule for this one)
strange to see this result because it lasted 1.5 hours on the previuous discharge.
did we do wrong with leaving it on?

it was at 12.5 volts before we left and 12.7 volt after return
by the way it has no short cells as far as we can tell

regards
weasel

[wild weasel]

all
since you are trying to get a battery to come back to a good DOC [DEPTH OF CHARGE] you don't care about cop so dont play
fair put the biggest battery up front and hammer the s### out of it

hello guy

just to make sure.
we run of a power supply so input amps and cop are at this point not our main intrest this is a trick for later on the game

if i understand you correctly we tune not for max rpm but for max input amps???? ( hammertime)
i see that we can reach 0.8 amps charge on the single coiler ( with digital multimeter) so far but drop from 350 rpm to 300
resistance is then on the trigger coil down to 30 ohm
at 350 rpm we run at about 70 ohm to 100 ohm depending on charge battery (180AH)

next build is ganna be a 4 coiler for starters
then we have 3 running

regards
weasel

[jelloir]

Hi Weasel, was 12.7V as high as you could push the 180AH battery? My research has been that you want to push it as high as it will go (up to 16.2V presuming it can get there) before a discharge cycle. If your only taking it to 12.7V but it can do more then I doubt your getting a good DOC as Guy suggests and therefore your not putting any capacity in to the battery.

As a comparison I am running against a 150AH Golf cart battery at the moment that was resting at 12V when I started (dead) and it's been running for days but is still slowly rising and is at 13.58 at the moment and hasn't plateaued yet. Draw from the primary is about 1.5A with 298RPM. It takes about 5 hours to go up .1V.

I am not sure what impact using a power supply would have on rejuvenation but my own research is that you should not use a power supply with an SSG as it has the wrong impedence. If I can find a reference to that I'll link to it. Basically you should be using a fully charged good battery as the primary. I just have a couple of new 65AH that I use and do a "swap and charge" with them.

[guyzzemf]

i dont run a power supply as a rule i raley ck output amps but i get it to 1 spike with min currant draw .i still want it to be efficient in the radiant charge .this maybe wrong but i see the batteries as rooms or caves that spike echoes through /hammertime means a bigger battery on ft. hammering a smaller batt on bk. . to me a power supply 1-3 or 5 amp dose not do the same as a 200 amp hr batt hammering a 30-50 amp hr on back end [keep voltage same] the charge battery has to do something
kinda like if you setup with 2 = batts ft. and bk but changed to big up ft 125 % and back 75%
and i never let ft. side get low at all . i have two big deep cycle ft. with a battery selector .max run 8 hr each batt. evan though the batt
would run 15 hr and not lose tune and run 24 b 4 batt got to low 11.00
I never change a thing once im happy with the setup for the battery i trying to save . each battery you try to bring back is diff and small
changes in base are needed /evan as the battery is coming back small base changes are needed as battery get its capacity back
what let me to this was having a pallet of 10 batts to work with /putting two batts up ft. in parallel did not seem to act like i big bat
although it seems like it should it did not 4 me . dont go too big to small [car to motorcycle batt]

[guyzzemf]

i have done a min of 10 pallets of 10 batteries ea . and got 15 holy t shirts [battery acid]
the first 10 batteries i got i had no choice in what i got when i went back to get 10 more the guy ask what happen to the first 10 i told him 7 of them
are back in cars /he did not believe me . so i gave him the 3 that were no good and he gave 1 battery that was his [he payed 4] and let me pick other 9 . his batt came back good + 7 more gave him his + one more good, at this point i could do no wrong so for next 3 + years i could pick my batts /no snow wights no dead cells no beat up or scared batt.terminals if the terminals look new its a good start
batteries with a low cell [low battery acid] and all else is good is a good chance it will live again
clean batt good a good load tester 100 amp is a must /i know i bought at least 5 gallons of distilled water
i wont do it all again but i do get 1 pallet every once and a wile and keep 5-4 batts ready to go .i still get calls or peoples come by
i cant keep a hydrometer with out breaking it bought many none are guy proof
ps im in texas very rare a batt get frozen and batts are sold for hot weather and cold
so i dont see any batteries that have been frozen i would think this would kill fast
guy

[wild weasel]

hello guy

just another question for you

how long does it take for you to bring a dead battery back to good condition?

and one more question witch is bothering us here
we see from time to time a sudden drop in the voltages under charge.
it happend a few times that in the morning we get lets say 13 volt on the charge battery and a couple hours later its down to 12.7 or lower
could this be because the plates are cleaning up and taking extra charge or are there other reasons???

in the meantime we put the amps up on the front side to hammer a bit stronger 1.35 amps at current
and we see a rise in the charge side to 13.62 volt under charge

lets see what happens now

regards
weasel

[guyzzemf]

weasel
the easy ones which probably would have charged up anyway with but had no capacity .when the discharge times went way up to 12 -15 hrs/ it can take up to 1O0 to 200 hrs of wheel time .you can tell by the first 4-5 discharge if its worth doing .discharge is the tell all.
i know that my system will charge a good batt in 2-3 eight hr runs .what you need to watch out for is when a batt that goes to 15-16 volts fast those will come back but you got to watch and as your seeing battery voltage drops .as the plates get better the voltage drops
i only needed to watch for first few charges if the discharge time went up in good say 1hr to3hr to 7 hr in 3 cycles [8 on 1 rest 8 on 1 rest+8 on check discharge time [cdt] I would do the first runs 8 on then cdt i did not care to much about getting to 14-15 volts till
battery had a dct of 8-10 hrs you will see as soon as you discharge a few ALL BATTERIES ARE DIFF. Some come back fast
a battery load tester is a good thing everyone should have one if the battery made good gains in first two 8 hr runs i could test with load
test [100 amp load for 2-3 sec]. i could tell about how long it will take to get a good doc .at this point a weak is good but if poor or less
its a maybe or a long road , you really need 3or 4 batts to play with so you can charge ea for run and discharge them and see the difference . plan on 15 runs ,some never got to 14 v but drove away in somebodys car . discharge to 12v rest .rest the batt is a must
if the batt has done good things up to now i try to rest batt longer don't freak out if you get a batt that is doing good and you load test
and batt dies it happens better now then when they start there car 2nd time
most of the time last charge is a hot with a smart charger and at least 2 of 10 batts i got needed nothing and 2 never should pickup
2 would be easy 2 a pain . some pallets had 7 good batts all car batts almost all came out of cars that got towed

don't get in a hurry and push a bunch of currant it wont help the doc this is why i say dont change a thing
you get payoff on the discharge if you know your ssg will charge a good batt the near same size for [x]base
resistance dont change it much i allways either add 50 to a 100 oms or take away 50 -100 no pot