trickle chargers
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 10:14 pm    Post subject: trickle chargers Reply with quote

so I have the usual battery issues, charge doesn't last very long however the problem is that I live in an apartment building with a communal carpark. I was wondering Will a solar power trickle charger work under artificial light, I assume it will but will get a lot less power, but the advantage is the lights in the car park never turn off. does anyone have experience with this working and know of any good brands of chargers
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bulldogger
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 10:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

think it would my linclon helment charges up in class under the lights and with the tig torch........light is light Confused
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 10:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

bulldogger wrote:
think it would my linclon helment charges up in class under the lights and with the tig torch........light is light Confused


Welders produce ultra violet light.... So really think of the light produced when welding as I little sun, just like the sun welding can and will give you a sun burn or "ray burn" if you don't cover up or from prolonged exposure...
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TurboMoehican
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 11:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

rather than wasting money on a useless trickle charger find the cause of the battery drain IE: door switches or lights or something is causing a parasitic loss of power.

and buy a better battery.
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Chappo
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 12:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Light is not light as you say.

Massive difference between a ~30w flouro tube as opossed to the sun.
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Sammy B
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 3:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

My trickle charger melted in the sun Suprised I'm also having this flat battery problem - Near new battery going flat in a matter of days of car being un-used (whilst connected to solar trickle charger)
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 7:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

TurboMoehican wrote:
rather than wasting money on a useless trickle charger find the cause of the battery drain IE: door switches or lights or something is causing a parasitic loss of power.

and buy a better battery.


I have a d34 yellow top only 6 months old so I don't think I need a better battery. the trickle charger is all of 20 so worth a try I thought
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Rusty P
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 8:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I killed my yellow top this weekend putting it on a normal multistage charger... FYI.

It was low (very low!) but Optima specifically says not to use Gel/AGM settings on chargers, so I used the standard Lead Acid setting and it cooked the battery. -_-
I have previously used the Gel/AGM setting with no issues...
Now I'm up for a new yellowtop I think! (sighh)
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 8:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sammy B wrote:
My trickle charger melted in the sun Suprised I'm also having this flat battery problem - Near new battery going flat in a matter of days of car being un-used (whilst connected to solar trickle charger)

do you remember the brand you used
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The Godfather
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 2:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

you could always take the battery inside with you and charge it there?
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Chappo
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 2:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Godfather wrote:
you could always take the battery inside with you and charge it there?


Make sure you do it in a well ventilated space!!!! Do not do it in your apartment.
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The Godfather
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 3:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Chappo wrote:
The Godfather wrote:
you could always take the battery inside with you and charge it there?


Make sure you do it in a well ventilated space!!!! Do not do it in your apartment.


haha yeah thought that was a no brainer but def needs to be said - do it near an open window or on your balcony if you have one!!

or over night in your bathroom with the door closed and worst case in the morn you could turn the extraction fan on.
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Rusty P
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 3:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

*nods*
I'm in the same boat mate.

Charger goes on the balcony... but watch it regularly! I left mine alone thinking it would work fine. Sulphation on the plates made it not accept the full charge, then it wouldnt get out of its bulk/absorption phase into the float, and it started boiling. Don't know how long it was boiling for, but after I noticed and turned it off, it's now putting out 6.7V Sad Bricked it. Ergh.

So normal charge it, or just disconnect the battery when you park the car. Solar trickle won't really work off interior lighting, especially with the newage flouro/LED type low-wattage lights.
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TurboMoehican
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 6:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well if ya yellow top D34 optima is getting drained then you all have a nasty power drain somewhere because Ive'd used them in other cars and pump huge stereo systems off these batteries for more than several hours without starting the car.!!!

These batteries should last a long time and not need recharging even if sat around for week or two so something on the aristo is drawing mega amps to be draining ya battery.

in terms of trickle chargers. those Caravan/camping Fold out solarpanels and Solarcharger controls would set ya back maybe $200 on ebay and ya have a much strong charger that would keep ya battery at Float charge all day and uses pulse width modulation to charge and are suited to AGM/Gel batteries.

and you could mount that in a battery box and sit it on ya balcony no issues.
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 6:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

won't disconnecting the battery affect the stereo/radio and alarm???? I am trying to avoid pulling the battery out and than putting it on charge then reconnecting all the time. I thought the uv lights might work because instead of only getting a few hours of sun the lights are on 24/7 and there are multiple lights which I was hoping would be enough to last a week and then I can drive it on weekends. am contemplating getting a ctek mxs5.0 if I can find a power point in the car park close by
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Rusty P
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 7:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It will 'affect' them.. in so far as you might lose your preset radio channels, and that's about it. It won't do any permanent damage. Unless, of course, your alarm goes off when you pull the battery (some have backup power for this purpose), in which case you're in trouble.

Either way, as just said ^, a yellow top d34 should last a LOT longer than that. Mine was surviving around 1 month with the car slowly draining it and I could still start her up and get her moving no stress. You've got some kind of massive battery drain issue if yours dies after a couple days.

As far as the solar charger goes.. I'm not exactly a physics lecturer, but I very much doubt you'll get enough power from internal lighting to be worth the effort.



I want to do some math...so:
Lets say your battery takes 3 days to discharge completely. That's 72hours. With a 55Ah battery, that means you're draining at ~750mA. Now, we'll ignore that normal cars with accessories should be sitting around 50mA or so.

You want to buy a cheap trickle charger.. let's take this sucker here:
http://www.supercheapauto.com.au/online-store/products/1-5W-Solar-Trickle-Charger.aspx?pid=292829#Cross
1.5W of fury in full sun. At 12V, that's 800mA! Sounds pretty reasonable.
Only, you don't have full sun (rated at 1000W/m2), you have .. some carpark lighting.

Question is.. how much light power does that have? Hard to tell really.. some data I googled seems to suggest incandescent bulbs have ~7uW/cm2 ..which is ~70W/m2, measured at 20cm. Compact Flouro's.. probably less.. around 40W/m2. This would make sense given they're usually rated around 70W/40W themselves.
Sure you have more of them spread throughout the carpark, but ultimately, you're at a fair distance from them (probably 2m+) and the irradiance from them is going to be pretty low... If they put out 50W/m2 at 20cm distance then at 2m (10x radius), the irradiance will be a factor of 100 lower, ie 0.5W/m2.
Taking a very very generous estimate, and saying you're directly under some high powered lights, you might be able to pick up a whole 100W/m2 sorta level from the bonnet of your car. More than likely, it would be closer to 5-10W/m2, but we'll run with 100W/m2 as maximum.

Doing this, you end up with your trickle charger putting out at best 80mA 24/7. Perhaps enough to offset the car a little if it had a normal drain, but no where near enough for the drain issues you're having.


(Light Data source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2868278/)

tldr: fix your battery drain. Problem solvered.
Hope that helps.
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Cerium
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 8:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You could put in a battery isolation switch if you don't have an alarm/don't mind the alarm being off, or just disconnect the negative terminal.
After wrecking 2 batteries in less than a year I always disconnect the battery if it's going to sit for more than 3-4 days. It only takes 20 seconds, if that.

Your solar charger idea is nice but it wont work. You need a whole heap more photons than the fluro tube can provide. It's the same reason you can't grow anything good under fluros!
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 9:00 pm    Post subject: trickle chargers Reply with quote

I have battery back up alarm so disconnecting the battery will result in alarm going off.
The advantage of the solar panel ones were you can dash mount them and take them anywhere, no point in buying a solar panel one for $200 if I have to take the battery out and put on the balcony might as well just buy a normal 240V for under $100.
I thought that this was quite a common problem, Rusty P that is the first time I have ever heard anyone get close to a month out of a battery in an aristo if that is the case then I will look into what can be stealing power
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Rusty P
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 4:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh, It's definitely a common problem...

But good quality deep cycle batteries like yellowtops can definitely last a number of Weeks between runs, as long as the runs are long enough to charge them back up to almost-full.
Most people use cheaper non-deep-cycle batts, which will last maybe a week or so the first time when fully charged, then start sulphating and by the time they're a year old you end up getting only 3-5days batt life out of it (unless you regularly take it out and run desulphation programmes through it). Quality yellowtops (or equivalent) should last you much longer, but only if your battery isn't already screwed, and only if your car has a 'normal' amount of parasitic drain.

Aristos are getting old, and battery drain issues are going to be relatively common on these things, but up to and around 70mA is probably pretty normal. Your alarm is going to suck maybe 20mA or so, then some standby power to clock,etc,etc is another 30mA or so. Over that is most likely erroneous parasitic drain. Go measure it and see how much your car is sucking... anything over 70 and I would definitely be trying to figure out where it's going. Less than that.. might not be worth it unless you can find easy culprits (stereo etc - anything aftermarket!)
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 12:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

the problem is my battery charger died so I have to get a new one and the car hasn't been getting long drives recently as I don't need a car in my new job so probably a compounding draining problem as 30minute drives probably don't recharge the battery to full. I will measure drain to see what it currently is and wait for my new charger to arrive, have went with a ctek mxs 5.0 and see how long it takes to drain when I know the battery is starting at full charge.
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