> Randy wrote: > So who knows what about charging car batteries? > I always thought it was bad to charge at a high rate. Better to > slowly charge at a low amperage unless one needed to get the > motor started and the battery did not cooperate. > Now I read on here, that you folks want big chargers with big > amperage. Are you just ruining your batteries or am I incorrect > in my assumption that slow and easy is better?
You are correct. Yes. Heat is bad. Rapid charging causes heat. So slow is better. Charge rate is usually expressed relative to the amp-hour capacity of the battery, so the "bigger" the battery the more amps can still be considered "slow". But - the alternator is rather high current. I don't remember what is on an OM61x - 60A maybe? With a bunch of glow and a lot of cranking the battery voltage could be low enough that alternator could be supplying more than 40 amps just to charge. Automotive flooded cell batteries are pretty tough. About the only thing good in a typical car is the battery is kept charged. High current of starting is not good. High current of the following charge isn't good. Heat (in an engine compartment) isn't good. Vibration isn't good. Use an AGM and when the system was built for a flooded cell and the voltage will be wrong. Etc. But we can still expect to get 7 years of use from one. _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
