Deep cycle battery charging

[Guest hawkesbass]

Hi all the deep cycle battery i have for the electric motor needs to be recharged im after advise as to best way to charge it is it best to do it on trickle charge overnight or use the quick charge function on the charger i know i have to release the caps on top while charging any advise appreciated

Cheers trevor

[The Incredible Hull]

release the caps whilst charging? that sounds a bit dangerous?

[Guest hawkesbass]

Releasing the caps allows the built up gasses to vent while charging

[Juggs]

What type of battery and what type of charger ?

Most battery's even with the screw in plugs still don't need to be unscrewed as the cap has a vent built in

Should also be charged as soon as possible after use

[hookmeup]

Dont forget to check your water levels before charging, even though you should actually check after charging as it can evaporate to a degree you dont want to charge & cook a dry battery & dont overfill , about 1 cm over the plates is all you need

[hookmeup]

Oh yeh & if its an overnight charge you are looking for a trickle charge will give it much more grunt & a better deeper charge than the quick heavy charge.

[Juggs]

And don't buy the shitty $50 units from the auto stores

Nothing works better then a Cetek charger

We were having issues with starting high compression race engines and it turned out many chargers won't fully charge a battery

Cetek fixed our issue by giving us a full charge to start the engines, even the $200 charger from jaycar was inadequate

[Guest hawkesbass]

My thinking was too trickle charge it overnight just needed it confirmed i have charged batteries before just not a deep cycle thanks for the replies i also have 100% battery acid at home too dilute if the battery needs a top up

[Geoff]

As Juggs suggests , you should use a good quality deep cycle charger which cost around $200 not an ordinary charger used on car batteries.

Check out this site which has good information on chargers. Note the auto cut off function when the battery is fully charged

http://www.firststartbatteries.com.au/shop/index.php?searchStr=charger&_a=viewCat&Submit=%C2%A0

As for the caps , if there are no holes then just loosen the caps. Actual removal is not necessary.

Geoff

[martoiscool]

Cant stress enough how good CTek chargers are... If you don't have one get one!! Well worth the cash

[Juggs]

My thinking was too trickle charge it overnight just needed it confirmed i have charged batteries before just not a deep cycle thanks for the replies i also have 100% battery acid at home too dilute if the battery needs a top up

a battery will fail if it is only trickle charged

generally a charger will ramp up to between 6-12 amps then back off when the battery is about 80-90% full

you need around 1amp of charging current for every 10amps of battery holding capacity

so 90a/h battery you need 9amps 120a/h 12amps