Thanks to you and Joe, Bruce. That helps. I certainly don't want to kill this pack.
I believe you have one of these - its a BC-20. I have been baby-sitting it, but it seems to need constant adjustment. Its always had good current capabilities, though - can get 15A into the pack at home, and off of a high capacity outlet at the facility I used to work at, I could get 20 (had a 108V pack at the time), though I turned it down to stay within the charger's limits. I'd sure like a PFC charger, but the expense is prohibitive for now. -----Original Message----- From: Bruce EVangel Parmenter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 11:53 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: charging question Other may POST about the voltage numbers, but have done a lot of charging (since I have six chargers). David please (re-) state what charger you are using. Yes, when I smell the slightest amount of sulfur, I shut down the charging. A good charging cycle on healthy batteries should not smell. But a good charging cycle on tired batteries, will. I have found a manual (bay boy, variac), light dimmer (K&W BC-20, Russco), Zivan chargers is not set correctly can be rough on batteries, over charging them, using too much water, etc. But once I set the PFC-20 to the pack voltage (in my case, I set my 132V pack to finish at 164V), I didn't have any smell or issues. It was like the TV-infomercial 'Set-it, and forget-it'. But this brings up a point that occasionally happens that others may want to share their views on. Sometimes the performance of a pack vary. Not much, but you can feel it. You can have good days, where the pack is performing well, and other days, when things seem to have a little less umooph (performance). I know that wording is hard for the techies to get their measurements and calculations around, but seat-of-the-pants observations rarely are. I attibute these variances to the various variables: -how well the electrolyte is mixed, -if the pack is balanced, -the temperature of the pack, -some batteries in the pack perform differently (non uniform manufacturing or flaws) Of the later, you can see some of that when you do your monthly watering. Some cells will use more distilled water than others. So far, with a new US145 pack and charging with a PFC-20, the slow smooth finishing charge has given me more uniformity in performance. Recently, when I turned my loaner PFC-20 charger back into manzanitamicro for the PFC-50 I ordered, I was using one of my 120VAC Zivan K2 chargers (the older 1kw K2 is shaped like a brick and has less output than a 120VAC NG3). I feel the difference between charging with the PFC-20 and other chargers by the pack's performance. Watt do you think? ===== ' ____ ~/__|o\__ '@----- @'---(= . http://geocities.com/brucedp . EV List Editor & RE newswires . http://egroups.com/group/evangel ===== __________________________________________________ Yahoo! - We Remember 9-11: A tribute to the more than 3,000 lives lost http://dir.remember.yahoo.com/tribute IMPORTANT - THIS MESSAGE (INCLUDING ANY ATTACHMENTS) IS INTENDED ONLY FOR THE USE OF THE INDIVIDUAL OR ENTITY TO WHICH IT IS ADDRESSED, AND MAY CONTAIN INFORMATION THAT IS PRIVILEGED, CONFIDENTIAL AND EXEMPT FROM DISCLOSURE UNDER APPLICABLE LAW. IF YOU ARE NOT THE INTENDED RECIPIENT, YOU SHOULD DELETE THIS MESSAGE IMMEDIATELY AND YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED THAT ANY READING, DISSEMINATION, DISTRIBUTION OR COPYING OF THIS MESSAGE, OR THE TAKING OF ANY ACTION BASED ON IT IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED. THANK YOU.
