i thoguth id post up in here as i figured all u guys n gals would be doing this quite often b4 comps etc.

i have an old trickle charger which doesnt seem to have many fancy circuts or anything.

i just pulled the leads off (the battery is not in the car, it is running an amp out of the car til my car is re reg'd so after i use it i recharge it using the trickle charger) and put the multi meter on it it read 13.09V now i kno quite regularly in the car it goes anything up to 14.4v but being a trickle charger is it ok for a battery to be at 13v? ill check it in an hour or so as i kno they drop back down a bit. but i really dont want the battery to explode or anything. if 13v is fine can i leave it going til it it gets up to like 14v???

cheers Jono.

13V is plenty fine

so can i leave it to run longer? 14v????? the more i cna charge it the longer it takes to run down to 11.5V which means the more music i can play b4 i have to recharge it. but i dotn want it to explode on me.

go buy a decent power supply then, one of the powertechs from Jaycar, they are $400 but an awesome investment, you can run the battery of the supply while its in your room.

Then when the time comes for backyard parties and car shows you can crank all nite/show.

it'll be fine charging like that.

Once overcharged my Odyssey 1500 to 16.5V dropped to 13.8V off the charger.

i dont have $400, i do have a trickl charger and a car batt tho, im thinking the ody is built a bit stronger than my "heavy duty" one. but ill let it run up to about 14V as it does that in the car. cheers guys!

its fine up to 14.5volts, you can go higher but it can overheat them and damage the plates on smaller ones.

what did you measure it with? if its a normal cheap multimeter then the reading is not right anyway, what you get is a peak reading! with all battery chargers you will get a reading of 15volts plus when its charging a 12v bat.

i charged a oddesyy 800 a 18volts once now i know not to do it again! it got so hot i couldn't hold my hand on it, that was 5 years ago though and the battery still perfect.
interestingly, once the acid reaches a temp of 60degrees it wont accept charge anymore so you have to disconect them and let it cool down or have them sitting in coolant when there charged.

What about charging the battery in dry ice? Sounds like somethin' you would do!

tuneman, when its down at about 11.5 and i hook up charger it jumps to 11.8 and slowly over hours it creeps higher and higher(measurign on my $10 DMM).


As ive been donig casual work at jaycar oer the apst few weeks ive had a good chance to look around and have been alerted of a new power supply which is not in the 05 cat, its a switchmode 20A unit, being switch mode its lighter and smaller and mroe efficient. its only 99.95 and given that thats 1/4 the price of the 40A unit yet still produces half the power(obviously) it seems its a great deal.(i dotn even haev $100 tho, yet...)

i looked at them once, one problem with using something like that( i think they have a setting for charging 12v batteries) is they can overheat with really heavy work but for single batteries they would be great.

as the battery charges the amount of amps being pulled out of the charger decreases so it allows higher voltages to flow through the circut till it reaches a maximum point, its a good way of seeing if there still charging if the ampmeter on the charger isn't very 'precision' you observe the voltage, if its still creaping up over a time of say an hour its still going. but yeah its normal

sometimes when it hits its peak it will beging to decrease! i assume its from the battery just sitting there and heating up, you would be amazed at the difference charging them at night compared to day !

interesting i'll have to check the specs for sulphuric acid, see if it can handle -90degrees

the power supply i talkin about has no charging feature its a 13.8V regulated 20A power supply. the reason as stated b4 is its litgher smaller and cheaper than previous models with similar output. i shud think 20A plus a battery would be good. only prob is it needs to be monitoed as if i left it itd keep pumping 13.8V into it...

mmmm dry ice!

nope! i'll have to put an antifreaze in it to go below 0 degrees but wont handle dry ice.....damm!!

how about normal ice then? i like the idea of coolant in a battery sitting in a bucket of dry ice... at least green is the colour of acid... and the "smoke" of the dry ice will give a really cool science chemistry effect...

ummm now were in the realms of fantasy

the color of nitric acid! all others are clear or slightly brown...
coolant in a battery would make the battery a heavy door stop!!

may i suggest a vegtable dye at least!

ok this id getting off topic.. so i think we shud stop [whispers] "b4 the mods find us hiding" [/whispers]


i figured the battery woudnt be a battery anymore with the distilled water substituted for green(also available in red!) antifreeze.

i have red coolant in my mums red camry... to match the paint...

the vegetable dye would only work if accompanied by the bubbling smoking dry ice...