----- Original Message ----- From: "Philip Lange" > Tested the Battery with a hydrometer today. One cell is flat, just > bubbled its way to oblivion. The other 5 cells are well into the green. > Spoke with a Trojan Tech this afternoon. Among other things he cautioned > against using those battery re-conditioners. Jason said that Trojan had > tested a number of them and none did what they were supposed to do. > Trojan is of the opinion that all they do is take juice from the > battery. > Philip
REPLY Did you really expect to get a rousing endorsement of a product that might cut into their sales? Pulsetech took out their patent back in 1985. They developed a product exclusively for the US military. It apparenly worked. After ten years of military use they got permission to market the product and technology to the consumer market in 1995. I was asked if I knew anything about the product in 2000. My initial reaction was "this must be snake oil! " but in an effort to at least give it the benefit of the doubt I did look into it. I worked for Xantrex at the time and I was given the go ahead to investigate and see if it might be viable technology and perhaps worthwhile licencing the technology as a complement to our own charger products. Despite my own scepticism I acquired some samples and began testing. We had a lot of dead batteries in our engineering lab so I started with them. To my surprise I was able to revive about half. These were batteries that had been tested to destruction or left on the shelf for months if not longer. In retrospect I suspec the recovered bateries wer likey the ones left on shelf before ebeign totally desttroyed. I also began disassembling batteries to see how the platesd inside had been damaged. At about that time Xantrex had a major shift in corporate focus and the project was abandoned. I continued on my own time. By this time several copy cat products began appearing on the market. Battery Minder being one of them. In one on one tests these did not always work as well. However I was getting similar results of about 75% - 80% recovery of sulfated batteries. Batteries that were physically damaged from electrolyte depletion or having bent and cracked plates did not respond to treatment. Sulfated batteries that were physically intact did. I began salvaging batteries from the disposal at marinas every spring. After a winter of siting idle , sometimes without even being charged, a lot of batteries were declared dead by mechanics who did not bother to test them properly. It is not snake oil nor is it rocket science. Pulsetech did at one time publish tech paper but of late these have disappeard from public posting. Presumably because too many competitors were reverse engineering the product and cutting into their sales. Don't take my word for it. do your own research. Puzzle out the physics behind the claims. you'll see. Arild . _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
