Message text written by "Kai M. Radicke"
>Well after an embarrassing incident during inspection a few weeks ago I
have
finally decided to figure out why my TR6's battery is dead every morning.
The battery is less than 18 months old to begin with, but it fails to keep
a
charge for more than 24 hours when I have it in the car. There are no open
circuits to drain it while the car is off (with the car off there is no
current being transferred at either the battery terminals or at each of the
three fuses). The car took a while to start up today, haven't run it in
quite a while had to get gas to the carbs and such, but it drained the
battery from 12.35V to 11.40 and now we're back into the 11.60 range with
the car running. What gives?
Note also: the battery is sufficiently discharged enough that after 3
hours
it is VERY difficult to turn the motor over on the starter. The TR6 nearly
stranded me the Friday I was helping Andy Mace unearth his new Herald, that
was from about 12:30pm to 3:30ish pm on a nice warm day.
Also note that as an experiment I had the battery out the past three days,
charged it as much as it took (12.40ish... at a steady 10AMP and then 2AMP
rate on my battery charger until full). The battery held the charge
completely while out of the car, because I checked it each day and the
voltage did not decrease and the battery charger also indicated that it was
still fully charged.
<
Kai, contrary to what you said there is a load that is staying on that is
discharging the battery. If the battery stays charged when not connected
but discharges when connected then the only explaination is that there is a
load still on. Check your trunk light and your glove box light. Then
check the Anti-run-on valve. Then check the air bag trigger system and the
global positioning system. Then the flux capacitor. Um, start checking
around for things on the unswitched circuit (the brown and purple wires)
Also, as Randall pointed out, the battery voltage should read in the 14 -15
volt range when being charged at the 10 amp rate and should be in the 13 .5
volt range when being charged at the 2 amp rate. If you are charging your
battery at 10 amps until it reaches 12.4 volts you are not fully charging
the battery. A typical auto battery has a 40 amp-hour rating, more or
less, and a fully discharged battery will require 4 hours at 10 amps to
recharge (40 Amp-Hours / 10 Amps = 4 hours). Did you charge the battery
for 4 hours?
Good luck
Dave Massey
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