|
Thanks David. That is a wealth of good information. I was unable to find any info on these batteries anywhere, but a friend of mine bought a set for his golf cart and once charged, they were working great. Now, that doesn't say much for capacity, but nonetheless, I think I'll try a set. I will also heed the charging practice for gels, but most GE chargers that I repair put out about 42VDC. I think I could use one of the Landis controllers with the setpoint at 42.5VDC or so to keep them from overcharging. While I've not had good luck with the solid state relays, I may have to wire one up that I can switch over from the timer. Thanks, Chad Sent from my Virgin Mobile phone. ------ Original message------ From: David Roden Date: Wed, Jun 17, 2015 12:16 AM To: elec-trak cosmos phy tufts edu; Subject:Re: (ET) Duracell Batteries On 17 Jun 2015 at 2:04, bushman165s aol com via Elec-trak wrote:> They are apparently made my Deka/East Penn and are gel cells. My> question is are they refurbs or some kind of wholesale brand?> Supposedly they have a nice 20 hour rate, but don't remember exact> numbers. I can get them from a local guy for $90 each. First, have a seat and let me tell you a little story about "refurbished" batteries.Several years back I went to a local battery dealer to buy a SLI battery for Margaret's ICEV. I got to chatting with the kid fetching my battery. This shop is located in -- shall we say -- a somewhat less prosperous area. It did a big business in $20 "refurbished" batteries for the mid-1970s vintage Detroit-iron land yachts that used to ply the streets over there right into the early 2000s.So I asked the guy, "Just how DO you refurbish a battery?" "Wecharge it," he replied.I would be really careful of "refurbished" batteries. Know what I mean?Now, about your gel proposal:I trust East Penn. They make a good battery, with careful quality control and consistent tolerances. When last I heard, all their batteries were made right there in Pennsylvania, not in some fly by night Asian sweatshop. Their gel batteries (Deka Dominators) are outstanding. I've been using the 8G24 12 volters (6 in series-parllel) in my ET for 15+ years, and they're just now starting to lose a bit of capacity. Dominators aren't high power batteries, because they have fairly high internal resistance. They wouldn't be my choice for a tractor pull, but they mow and plow snow just fine. And I never have to worry about cleaning acid spray off them or seeing the terminals corrode.I do have to warn you though that when you buy gel batteries, you don't get to close your wallet yet. East Penn will void their warranty if you charge them at more than their recommended maximum, which is 14.15v (per 12v battery at 20 deg C. I push this to between 14.2 and 14.3 volts with never a problem, but mine are long out of warranty. IIRC the GE can easily run up to 44-45v on charge. That's too high, but it's not the whole story. Another problem is GE's battery taps for the lift and lights, which discharge the batteries unequally. GE dealt with that by brute force equalization -- overcharging the fuller batteries to make sure the emptier ones get charged. However, gel batteries can't handle that kind of overcharging. So you need to either (1) add a shunt regulator to each module (battery); (2) use an indvidual charger for each battery; or (3) rewire the lights and lift to run on the full 36 volts, possibly with a DC:DC 36v:12v converter. I use (2) in the form of three 12v chargers. If you used Deka 8GGC2 6 volt golf car gel batteries, you'd need six 6v chargers. You could cut this to 3 12v chargers by rewiring the 18v lift tap for either 12v or 24v (I use the latter) and charging battery pairs in series.Don't forget to add in these extra costs if you go with the gel batteries. If you decide to stick with flooded golf car batteries: As far as different brands, IMO in the ET, that GE charger and the battery tapping are bigger factors in battery life than the batteries' intrinsic quality. So maybe you'll get 8-9 years with budget batteries, 10-11 years with US Battery, 11-12 years with Trojan. Do the dollars-per-year math and decide.David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Note: mail sent to the "etpost" address will not reach me. To send me a private message, please use the address shown at the bottomof this page : http://www.evdl.org/help/= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =_______________________________________________Elec-trak mailing listElec-trak cosmos phy.tufts.eduhttps://cosmos.phy.tufts.edu/mailman/listinfo/elec-trak |