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+--- Thread: Battery Chargers NZ (/showthread.php?tid=4451)
Battery Chargers NZ - Bob Culver - 02-06-2020
For any NZ local running an old car on 12v with occasional use and/or no voltage regulator or maintaining a low use "modern" I chanced to notice that the Warehouse are selling a 3.8 amp smart charger which claims to charge to 14.5 volts, taper off and float at about 13.5 which is close to the ideal. $59 whereas similar elsewhwere about double that. Whether id does as claimed or how reliable I dunno.
(The almost universal Low Maintenance battery has rendered simple old style chargers and traditonal recharging largely obsolete. i t was the practice to cut to about 7% AH capacity at 14 volts and stop when volts steady for half an hour or so, often around 15.5 volts. This involved a period of generous gassing. The modern batteries gas less (internally) and later but the full gas stage is to be avoided, at least on a routine basis. Prolonged 14.6 volts, as normal running in a modern, maintains full charge.)
RE: Battery Chargers NZ - Bob Culver - 10-06-2020
I have built and otherwise acquired about six battery chargers over the ages but none ideal for the now normal PbCa batteries with their charging liimit of 14.6 v or so. Or for maintaining idlle moderns with their irksome constant drain. So after much soul searching I splashed out. It does not charge to the 14.5 v indicated on the box, or 44.4 in specs, but to only 14.2. The current is not maintained at 3.8 as claimed. The higher voltage option seems not to work.The float is pulsed 13.1/13.2 which is a mite low. The importer apparently receives many enquiries each day, mostly misuse, but seems noone else has ever questioned the voltage! I suspect made for the 240v Australian market not 230v as here. In the time wasted I could have made a regulator, and probably will. Back it goes.
I rarely buy anything new; nothing seems to work as claimed and nothing can be fixed. Unlike old cars, bikes etcwhere most defects are remediable. .