[Roadsters] battery tender

[Walter Peterson]

I just RMA'd a battery tender KNOWING it was bad because it couldn't keep my
Yamaha battery up to snuff. (Enough to start).  But I was wrong!  The
battery couldn't keep a good enough charge because I had "hurt it" one too
many times. Installed a new battery and all is well.  Battery Tenders will
charge your battery if it can take it.  If you think you need a brute force
charger to pump it up, you're just buying a little time.  I learned all of
this from the manufacture of my battery minder.  I wasn't too happy with
needing another new battery in such short order, but he was right and the
bike starts easy every time I want to ride it!


Walt Peterson
Santa Barbara CA
67e R20 w/44's
5-spd, LSD & Big Brakes.



-----Original Message-----
From: datsun-roadsters-bounces at autox.team.net
[mailto:datsun-roadsters-bounces at autox.team.net] On Behalf Of Durf & Sue
Hyson
Sent: Sunday, July 17, 2011 3:26 AM
To: datsun-roadsters at autox.team.net
Subject: Re: [Roadsters] battery tender

Here's  weird question !

Are both the batteries in these cases conventional lead acid batteries ? 
It sounds it .  Especially the car that was driven with the headlights and
the nav unit on , What is being said there is that while the car was being
driven the alternator was NOT capable of supplying  enough power to run the
car and charge the battery or , in a more likely scenario , the battery is
partially what we used to call sulfated and is so resistant to charge it was
slowly losing power . Generally speaking when you come home after driving
the car and throw your tender on most of the time it should go straight to
green . The exception to this would be the half hour errand run down town
where you started and stopped the engine
6 times as you went from place to place but the total run time on the engine
was 10 or 12 minutes . In a case like that the starter may have pulled the
battery down a little and the drive home wasn't long enough to fully
recharge it .
The heat you feel in the plug of the tender is from it "straining" to force
juice into a battery that it senses needs it but the battery is resisting
taking it . It's kind of like that red face you got when  1 year old you
were sure needed to be fed wasn't so sure it was willing to eat . You've got
the apple sauce on the spoon and the spoon up to his/her face but the mouth
just isn't gonna open and take it in .

There is one other consideration on tenders . They are most efficient by a
factor of about 3 when you install the short hard wire pigtail and plug in
and out of that as opposed to using the alligator clamps . A tender is a
very low amperage rickle charger . Any of its power wasted through weak
connectons is power the battery never sees . You think you are giving it 1
1/2 amps but it is only seeing half that with the expected effect on the
charging time .Also as we add all kinds of neat stuff to our cars ,
especially anything with a memory (stereo's are the biggest culprit here)
the draw on the battery goes up . this is why we keep a tender on them in
the first place but in some cases there is so much draw that a real
automatic 2 to 10 amp battery charger is a better option than a tender .


Thanks,
Durf
(Battery tendered vehicles I have or am dealing with : 7 Zs  , 1 2000 ,
5 Loti , 9 asst race cars , 2 Cortinas , 2 car trailers , 3 tow vehicles ,
etc)


  on first use it stayed red for more than 72 hours,
> which is the max it should have taken.   I gave it another 48 hours, and
> it finally went green.  The unit (block that plugs into the AC power) 
> always feels a bit too warm even for when it is not actively charging.
>
>> I bought a battery tender about a week ago. After each drive since I 
>> have hooked it up and the next day the little light has always been 
>> green. I had the Roadster out last night with headlights on and an 
>> auxillary power jack running my garmin. Today,  about 18 hours since 
>> hooking up the battery tender, the light is still red (not that 
>> surprising I guess) but the plug end is very hot.
________________________________________

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