Unsmoothed car battery charger - is it crap?

[Michael A. Terrell]

TMT is a troll who usually hangs around rec.crafts.metalworking

[daestrom]

All cells connected in series and charged/used that way. Disconnecting an individual cell is possible, and sometimes done when a cell goes bad (the jumpers used to jump across the bad cell are quite large, IIRC six conductors for + and six for - all about the size of two fingers).

Each cell does have a tiny lead that comes out to a test jack on the 'individual cell voltage panel' where you could measure the voltage of each cell to spot poor performers.

daestrom

[Archimedes' Lever]

I do not see where he qualified his remark with a battery type. Doh! But you keep right on hunting, Hunt.

[JosephKK]

Isn't Tesco a gas station?

[Roger Hunt]

In article , Archimedes' Lever writes

OK, O Wise One, how long should I keep searching for the Holy Cell?

[Stuart]

They are a major supermarket chain but they do have filling stations at many of their sites.

I believe some now do have gas (LPG) on the forecourt but most still only sell petrol and diesel.

[Proteus IIV]

=A0 London SW

IT SEEMS THE PROBLEM WITH THIS CHARGER IS FILTERING IN OTHER WORDS OUTPUT WAVE FORM ATTENUATION RECTIFYING IS NOT AN ISSUE OR IT WOULD NOT ADJUST TO THE CHARGE AT ALL

I AM PROTEUS

[Proteus IIV]

AND THAT MAKES YOU THE RESIDENT EXPERT ON TROLLS ????

I AM PROTEUSD

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Who apparently can't even shout his name correctly.

[Jules]

His teletype obviously needs adjusting.

[Proteus IIV]

THIS POST IS CRAP

I AM PROTEUS

[Jasen Betts]

Gel electrolyte batteries use gel electrolyte,

There are wet batteries marketed as sealed. These typically have no user accessable ports to access the electrolyte, but will still leak if inverted etc..

"zero-maintenance" car batteries often have the electolyte ports under the label.

yeah they have a catylist that oxidises most of the free hydrogen back to water. as long as you don't overheat them they can tolerate some overcharging.

[Jasen Betts]

how do you deal with mains fluctuations?

[Michael A. Terrell]

How do you do it with any battery charger? Hint: You don't. It would require the AC line to be well out of tolerance, either high or low before the charging current would change more than a few percent. That is what a transformer does. I used a 24 volt 15 amp transformer after the variac. That reduces the change in line voltage by a factor of 5 to 1. The variac raises it to around 7 to one at the five amp charge rate I use most of the time, so the line voltage would have to go up to 128.4 for a 1% rise in the transformer's secondary voltage. The change in charging current is quite small.

If the battery is quite low, or dying I have a garage type charger that will start most car engines, even with no battery in the vehicle. It has no adjustments, other than a mechanical timer to set the charge time.

[Michael A. Terrell]

Yawn

[Proteus IIV]

e:

I THINK SAW YOU AT THE FIREWERX DISPLAY

BURRRRRRP

I AM PROTEUS

[David Lesher]

I believe it was the bulb rectifier chargers that had a bad-news side effect.

They were half-wave, directly coupled to the line. If a shop had a large one, & not much other loads; the pole pig transformer core would start to saturate with DC.

And when it did... it would fail rather spectacularly.... as in KaBoom...