Ebay "Pulse Battery Chargers" CTEK replacement?

[gerryvz]

This happened to me, ONCE. After that, I set a recurring reminder on my Outlook calendar to check all my maintainers once per month, to verify they are connected & charging, and the battery is topped off.

You should also have a separate set of Outlook reminders for desulfation, as well as a log & spreadsheet for monitoring desulfation trends over time, for each battery in your fleet.

 

[gsxr]

Nice yank, Gerry. But the desulfation just needs to be happening continually. Nothing to monitor besides periodically checking the voltage is normal.

 

[LWB250]

Nice yank, Gerry. But the desulfation just needs to be happening continually. Nothing to monitor besides periodically checking the voltage is normal.

And he doesn't use Outlook. Lotus Notes. Or maybe Pine.

Dan

 

[gerryvz]

Secretly, he uses an email program called HP Desk.

 

[JC220]

1st 1 month master desulfator test is chooching (Cheapie £8.50 amazon desulfator just for giggles)

View attachment 107200

I will provide the hopefully improved internal resistance/ battery health in a month from now. Or maybe fork all will happen with this unit

Then the USA one going on another 13 year old Mercedes battery

Approx 3 weeks later I can already tell the Ebay cheapie de sulphators appear to be useless!! At least on this battery it was about 47% health prior to a go on the pulse repair charger.

This brought the health up to a new value of 56% then the desulphator was attached hoping it would add further improvement or indeed stave off decay of this figure.

The Ebay cheapie desulfator has been connected full time and the battery off and on a trickle charger to keep it fully charged.

What can be seen already is the battery health is steadily decaying back towards 50% odd in a few days. (At 52% when I stopped this test)

Now this same battery is on the Better USA delsulphator for 3 weeks and let's see what happens there!

If these were to work I would expect to see small improvements in both the battery resistance and health numbers when tested.

 

[gerryvz]

UPDATE

Approx 3 weeks later I can already tell the Ebay cheapie de sulphators appear to be useless!!

 

[gsxr]

Joe, have you also run a high-load test (at least 100A, preferably ~500A) with an old-fashioned carbon-pile load tester? Just curious if those results match the fancy capacitive tester.

 

[JC220]

Joe, have you also run a high-load test (at least 100A, preferably ~500A) with an old-fashioned carbon-pile load tester? Just curious if those results match the fancy capacitive tester.

I dont have the cabon load testers Dave may get one soon! No one has them here in UK oddly so I'd have to get one sent over.

For the moment I find the little tester very accurate actually! I know the ages of my batteries and it is pretty much spot on. It is certainly more useful than I first expected to to be!

The battery that was put on the Batteryminder desulfator a couple days ago is already back up to 57% health! That is encouraging and shows it is doing something VS the Ebay cheapie crap ones whereby the battery health was declining!

Now it is steadily on the rise again. Went back up from 52% to 57% this evening in a couple of days. Be interesting to see if it gets up past 57% in the next few days which would be a new record for that battery and would really show the batteryminder is working well

 

[TerryA]

Louis,

No vent pipes came with the battery. Thanks for the hint. I will check out the fender vent route.
BTW, The AGM battery is only supposed to emit hydrogen gas because of the gel plates. No harmful acid fumes like the lead acid batteries.

Also, The vent tubing I used on the Interstate battery was not kinked in any way. I think the corrosion was from just the presence of the acid battery and possible the case leaking or weeping a little. Other than the tray I don't think there is any real damage to the battery compartment.

Gerry, Thanks, I will check out that Dorman Vent tubing.

My main concern is that whatever I use is vented completely out of the battery compartment to the outside.

lol

OK, I have installed the new Champion H8 battery in my 500E. I have come up with a problem. I cannot close the hinged battery door. For some reason the battery is setting to high. It is supposed to be 7.49" high. I did not measure the Interstate battery I removed. I installed a new battery tray that bolts in with 4 nuts only one way.

I removed the old battery tray, cleaned up the small amount of corrosion at the front end. It was just damaged paint, no rot or rust to speak of. I refinished the new battery tray and installed it with no problems. At least I don't think I had any problems. Installed the new battery hooked it up it works great. BUT the hinged lid does not close it hits the battery top before the lid is down. It's a real PITA to get this thing out and in because of the sound board floor I installed over the trunk floor.

I have checked and the battery appears to be setting in the tray properly. It's not hung up on the ledge of the tray

Any Ideas or suggestions before I start ripping stuff apart?

 

[TerryA]

OK, I have installed the new Champion H8 battery in my 500E. I have come up with a problem. I cannot close the hinged battery door. For some reason the battery is setting to high. It is supposed to be 7.49" high. I did not measure the Interstate battery I removed. I installed a new battery tray that bolts in with 4 nuts only one way.

I removed the old battery tray, cleaned up the small amount of corrosion at the front end. It was just damaged paint, no rot or rust to speak of. I refinished the new battery tray and installed it with no problems. At least I don't think I had any problems. Installed the new battery hooked it up it works great. BUT the hinged lid does not close it hits the battery top before the lid is down. It's a real PITA to get this thing out and in because of the sound board floor I installed over the trunk floor.

I have checked and the battery appears to be setting in the tray properly. It's not hung up on the ledge of the tray

Any Ideas or suggestions before I start ripping stuff apart?

OK Troupes,

WAKE UP!

I NEED SOME HELP HERE, WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

 

[JC220]

Not sure how battery sizes work that side of the pond Terry. Here the correct battery size is 019.

Some battery manufacturers measure height to the base of the terminal posts. Whilst others list height to top of battery / posts.

I suspect your new battery is too tall VS the old one.

 

[ace10]

Champion made by Johnson Controls.
Probably need to compare it to one of the East Penn brands (Duracell and Legend). Duracell spec says 7.50" height.

 

[TerryA]

Not sure how battery sizes work that side of the pond Terry. Here the correct battery size is 019.

Some battery manufacturers measure height to the base of the terminal posts. Whilst others list height to top of battery / posts.

I suspect your new battery is too tall VS the old one.

I'm tending to agree with you but it's supposed to be in the H8 group which is the correct size. Now I'm sorry that I didn't measure the Interstate battery that I removed.


I'm also suspecting the new battery tray that I purchased from Captruff. I did not actually compare the two trays. Worst case I would have to use the old tray.

Anyway, I'll get to the bottom of it but it will have to wait until tomorrow. I have some people working on my home today and I

Champion made by Johnson Controls.
Probably need to compare it to one of the East Penn brands (Duracell and Legend). Duracell spec says 7.50" height.

I did! All that I checked say 7.5" or within 1 mm of that.

I'm thinking that as much as I don't want to I will have to get the new battery out and go to step 1 (which I did not actually do) and compare the old and new battery trays.

I'm not going to return the battery. If I have to I will shim the door hinge and raise the trunk floor by the same amount with some type of pad. It would be temporary until the battery is replaced at some later date.

Anyway gotta go for now. A couple of guys will be at my door to start a job. I'll check back later today.

ONE QUESTION: I KNOW THE NEW TRAY THAT I INSTALLED IS A LITTLE DIFFERENT IN APPEARANCE. COULD IT HAVE BEEN OUT OF A 400E420?
WHAT OTHER MODEL HAS THE REAR MOUNTED BATTERY TRAY?

 

[gerryvz]

The battery tray for the E500E is a 129 part number.

PRECAUTION: Check your battery tray & battery area !!! | Body Shop

Folks, I have had an exceedingly weak battery over the past few days in my E500, prompting me to finally bite the bullet and replace it with an AGM battery. The old battery is an Interstate Batteries Mega-Tron Plus battery, purchased in March of 2011, so it has lasted more than 6 years in the...

www.500eboard.co

 

[JC220]

Update- the BatteryMinder desulphator appears to be working very well thus far. Battery health is increasing and resistance is dropping. Next I need to get a splitter in order to have 4x cars hooked up at once



Ebay Desulfator: 0
BatteryMinder: 1

 

[TerryA]

Update- the BatteryMinder desulphator appears to be working very well thus far. Battery health is increasing and resistance is dropping. Next I need to get a splitter in order to have 4x cars hooked up at once

View attachment 110075

Ebay Desulfator: 0
BatteryMinder: 1

Joe,

Don't forget to install the underground conduit and cable so you wont be tripping over all of those wires
.

lol

 

[gerryvz]

He could dig a trench to emplace the wires, using a claw hammer.....

 

[JC220]

OK so I'llwind this one up. This small battery is only used for parts yard trips. So doesn't really matter.

But the BatteryMinder is still improving the condition day by day!


Conclusion -

Ebay pulse battery chargers are good!! But the effect can decay back over a period of time. Still a great charger and does better than the CTEK in terms of ability to improve battery condition in short order.

The Ebay cheap desulphators are a total waste of time. Do not buy.

BatteryMinder does without doubt work and work very well at that. Highly recommend

 

[JC220]

OK so I made a mistake on the S600s Varta date coding. It's at least 10 years old Its also too big size for the S600's tray whereby the clamp doesn't fit. The S600 has a correct fitting AGM 019 size in it now and is happy spinning over like only a V12 can.

BUT in the interest of science I received and connected up the Batteryminder today and I'll give it a couple of weeks to see if anything changes on that particular Varta but really: A- it isn't the correct size & B: Its likely too old to recover.

The battery minder unit appears nice quality and is really easy to use I like it! It will soon have 3 or 4 batteries on it for a long term test but for now I'll let it concentrate on this knackered Varta.

For the record this Varta has already been on the repair cycle of the Ebay charger and Ctek recond cycle twice and continues to fail. Its likely chooched but what to heck let this thing sit for a bit and see if anything changes at all.

View attachment 107441 View attachment 107442 View attachment 107443 View attachment 107444

The Mastersulphator is back!

I have lost a couple more batteries this winter. Kind of seems normal now to have to buy new batteries quite regular. Plus side is I have about a dozen batteries now all less than 2 or 3 years old. Just need to look after them - inactivity does them harm for sure.

One word of warning is this particualr charger pictured above needs checked periodically.

I left it for a couple months there on my S500 without checking the display. My bad because the charger said Bad Cell and wasn't charging it for god knows how long so the battery is stone dead and probably scrap. I KNOW it was a good battery prior to that when I was keeping an eye on it and using it. I can't help but think it was a small error and when triggered the unit dragged the battery down and kept it down for a long period as a result.

So it seems these smart chargers are only as smart as the guy operating them - check them at least once a week!

 

[ace10]

So you've got to periodically check the battery maintainer that is supposed to alleviate the need for checking on the battery?

 

[JC220]

So you've got to periodically check the battery maintainer that is supposed to alleviate the need for checking on the battery?

Yes pretty much! CTEK and NOCO are good never had one crap out like that. Indeed about 5 of them ran all winter and not a flaw. Used my Topdon battery health tester and all batteries on the CTEKs and NOCOs are strong still

Particulary if you are running multible batteries on one maintainer you want to keep a careful eye.

For me - next winter I will be pulling all batteries when winterising my cars, lining them up in the Uitility Room where I am in each day and can glance at the status occasionaly. Basically being a real mastersulphator is what it's all about.

 

[ace10]

...

For me - next winter I will be pulling all batteries when winterising my cars, lining them up in the Uitility Room where I am in each day and can glance at the status occasionaly.

I'm getting this kind of vibe about your utility room.
Do you talk to the batteries?




Really hope I'm wrong.

 

[Ntrepid]

“It puts the battery on the tender”

 

[gsxr]

So it seems these smart chargers are only as smart as the guy operating them - check them at least once a week!

This is correct. Batteries do not last forever, even when on a maintainer. I have a reminder on my calendar to check all maintainers once per month.