Unsmoothed car battery charger - is it crap?

That is why he is called 'dimbulb' or 'Always Wrong', no matter which ignorant nym he trolls with:

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a box like that. As I recall it hat a rotary snap switch on the front and a circular tapped switch to adjust the charging current and one rather old-fasioned ammeter. Turned it on and checked the current, adjusting the tap to suit.

But that definitly looks like the 'bulb' :-) Thanks for the memory jogger...

daestrom

Diode stacks have bigger drops.

With a forward drop of something like 0.7 volts how many do you need in a stack to get towards the 6 or 7 volts forward drop of a tungar and why would you need a stack to get a reverse voltge of a mere 20 volts.?

John G.

We were having a conversation, not a pissing match, you retarded twit.

There is no conversation possible with you Archie; it's always a pissing match because of your foul mouth. And you are always the one being pissed on.

Are you ready to explain your statement of celibacy yet?

You don't "need" a stack, but if you "need" to drop volts, and you are using a diode, you need a stack, no?

Our HV diodes, though not capable of such currents, dropped as much as

isn't it obvious? Nothing on earth is desperate enough to get laid, that they will stoop to dimbulb's level.

Just in case you did not read what we are talking about.. It was replacing Tungar rectifiers in battery chargers.

Battery chargers rarely need 60 series elements to make a HV stack and whats more your 60 diodes would not be much good for 6 amps. Please try and stay on topic.

John G.

By the time the battery is visibly bubbling you have damaged irreparably.

I believe that this depends on the specific battery type.

As I understand it, classic lead-acid flooded storage cells are often deliberately given a periodic "equalizing charge", at a voltage high enough to cause electrolysis and bubbling. This mixes up the electrolyte, reversing the stratification of water and acid which can occur in these cells. One then adds some water to replace what was lost in gas form due to the electrolysis. Done properly this doesn't seem to damage batteries designed for it.

This shouldn't be done to gel cells (or AGM cells, I imagine)... I believe it *will* damage those.

I'm not sure how tolerant modern "no-maintenance" grid-plate car batteries are to this sort of overcharge.

You'd probably have to do like the old radio guys do replacing selenium rectifiers and add a suitable power resistor in series with the diode.

ALL lead acid batteries (not gel cells) bubble while charging. That is the normal process. That is why you keep sparks away from charging batteries. It is a normal process.

Where did you get that nonsense? One of the benefits of equalizer charging is that it will form bubbles of gas that helps to stir the electrolyte and mix it to a more uniform concentration.

We deliberately do this to a lot of different lead acid batteries.

What *really* hurts a battery is overheating it or discharging it so low that you reverse one or more cells. But charging to the point of gassing is not a serious problem.

daestrom (former submarine battery-charging electrician)

I used to rock my batteries several times before a charge session.

Let's have the "placing a lead acid battery on a concrete floor will discharge it" discussion.

Maybe we should submit that one to Myth Busters.

| I used to rock my batteries several times before a charge session. | | Let's have the "placing a lead acid battery on a concrete floor will | discharge it" discussion. | | Maybe we should submit that one to Myth Busters.

I wanna see some batteries explode! Can they get 1000000 amps through it?

Maybe we can get them to go after the world record for size of a Tesla coil.

They'd probably have to have a sub-station put in.

I remember my parents always opening the fillers on the top of the battery to let the gas out. (why I don't know, they vent when you charge them on the car anyway)

Then they got one of those fancy auto vent batteries with the lift up vent cover.. they decided that they needed to lift that when charging it. Came back to a floor covered in battery acid as lifting the strip closed the vents, really intelligent design that.

So gassing can do a lot of harm if the user expects different behaviour to what happens.

Gassing doesn't do harm. Dumb users do harm. Just like with guns.