Dead Battery - New cost of my e-bikes

[John in CR]

I've successfully converted to ebikes as my primary form of local transportation, so my car has ended up parked for weeks at a time. The little vampires in my car's electrical system killed that battery. I guess I'll have to use some of my spare lead that was headed to windmill energy storage in the car instead. I think a deep cycle lead will fair better with such intermittent usage, and down here we don't get the same kind of demand for cold cranking amps that you guys get in the frozen north.

If I can come up with a reliable enough charging protection system, it would be cool to put my recycled konions that didn't pass muster for ebike packs to good use in my car. Heat in the engine compartment and low risk charging would be my primary concerns. Maybe I can leave that mostly dead lead battery in place and just run some wiring into the car for connecting the konion pack as a booster only for starting, and charge it separately. I use the car seldom enough that wouldn't be too big an inconvenience. hmmm.

John

 

[TylerDurden]

I have one of those 12V PV trickle chargers... seems to work.

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/d ... mber=41144

 

[Icewrench]

Runnig a car with a weak battery will cuase the alternator to run full tilt constantly.
Soon alternator diodes will likely pop.
Parasitic drain of computers in cars will drain a good battery in 6 to 8 weeks of not driving.
Solar trickle might work in some places... Too many clouds around here for that one.
Dis connecting the battery for long term storage will stop the drain.
And give you another reason not to run the car.

 

[John in CR]

Runnig a car with a weak battery will cuase the alternator to run full tilt constantly.
Soon alternator diodes will likely pop.
Parasitic drain of computers in cars will drain a good battery in 6 to 8 weeks of not driving.
Solar trickle might work in some places... Too many clouds around here for that one.
Dis connecting the battery for long term storage will stop the drain.
And give you another reason not to run the car.

So a weak car battery makes an alternator work harder, and turns all that extra alternator juice into heat? That sounds so explosively dangerous that it doesn't seem right. Hopefully one of the perfectly good deep cycle batteries I have will fit, and I'll just do that, and remember to monitor the battery so I don't kill another one.

John

 

[PWJM]

its not explosively dangerous. I've killed many alternators from using Subs or powerful lighting systems. They just give up the ghost without warning never to put forth a spark again.... till you rebuild them.

 

[dnmun]

why not just drive the car occasionally, that keeps it from decaying, not just your battery but the fuel system, oil seals and other things. it really isn't good to leave it dead, and i have about a dozen dead cars, so i know.

 

[Roy Von Rogers]

Get one of those and leave it on the vehicle. I have two of these and they also will desulphate a battery.

http://www.pacificbattery.com/batteryminder.html

Roy

 

[John in CR]

its not explosively dangerous. I've killed many alternators from using Subs or powerful lighting systems. They just give up the ghost without warning never to put forth a spark again.... till you rebuild them.

I was talking about the battery not the alternator. If the alternator is working extra hard, and the battery isn't capable of storing that energy, then it gets turned into heat somewhere. I'd expect it to show up in the battery, just like when you try to force extra juice into lithium batteries. Maybe it manifests in the alternator and that's what burns it up.

John

 

[John in CR]

Get one of those and leave it on the vehicle. I have two of these and they also will desulphate a battery.

http://www.pacificbattery.com/batteryminder.html

Roy

Thanks Roy. I've wondered about whether those things work. I have a couple of old batteries that would put it to the test, and it's probably something good to have if I'm going to have a bank of lead anyway.

John