Battery caps

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spock500

Active Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2008
Messages
727
Location
Milton Keynes
Car
S124
A quick question, when charging a battery overnight whilst in the car do you need to;

a) Loosen the caps which cover the cell compartments?

b) Disconnect battery from car itself?

Thanks,
 
a) No. That is only for very rapid chargers.
b) There are differences of opinion on this. Assuming you don't have a high current charger (say <5amps) and it is working correctly, I don't believe that there would be any problem, as the battery will act as a large 'soak'. So, personally, I would do it.
Disconnecting the battery may require anything which has a memory to be reset.

Other members may (and will) disagree with me on b)
 
Some M-Bs are supposedly very sensitive to the momentary voltage spike you can get when you first connect a charger to the battery terminals. As mentioned, this is potentially a bigger problem with high rate chargers (which put out more voltage).
 
I personally would take it out of the car so if anything goes wrong my car is still okay batteryless but okay:D.

Also worth caps off, so you can see how all the cells are doing during charging ie all gassing the same or not at all.

Maybe im old fashioned but at work (trucks) any battery charging is mainly off vehicle and caps off.

Lynall
 
It's a Tronic battery charger which is supposed to be quite good.

Not sure of tech spec though.

I had a look at another battery in the garage charging with it (topping up) but no fizzing or bubbles that I could see.

I like to charge them with a desulphator attached every now and then to keep them in good shape :thumb:
 
Oliver just mentioned in an email that some batteries have an 'exhaust' tube down one side - haven't looked at the one in the car but the 120ah Mercedes battery in the garage has a tube on the side -

Presumably this would help to vent when bubbling during charging?
 
The vent pipe is to take away the explosive gases released during charging, when the battery is in a sealed compartment (boot, for example).
 

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