[AT] Batteries charged backwards.

[Indiana Robinson]

There are a bunch of options, about any of which could be wrong...  :-)
My roll around charger is 2 amp / 20 amp / 50 amp. I used the 2 amp setting
95% of the time.Most dead battery starts are done with a booster pack. I
often hook it up and flip the switch on and walk away for 5 minutes then
start the engine.
If I have something with the battery down and I'm not needing to use it I
am prone to just connect a float charger to it and let it run a day or two.
I just keep buying those and running them a lot in the winter.
I do have a sort of "smart charger" that I use often if it isn't hiding
somewhere.
The fully automatic 36 volt golf cart chargers seem to be fairly
sophisticated and I might in a case like Cecil's consider hooking the 2
dead batteries and 1 good one in series and hook the 36 volt charger to
them and set it for a full length charge. Of course that might be wrong...
:-)
One time about 1966 I was driving a 1961 Ford Falcon which used a very
small battery and I forgot to turn off my dome light. It snowed about 8"
that night and when I looked out it looked like somebody had cut an even
round hole all the way to the roof with a huge biscuit cutter. That little
bulb had kept that spot warm all night. When I went out to check the bulb
was not glowing at all... We were out in the country and at that time I
didn't have anything else with a battery and my only charger was a 1 amp
trickle charger. Happily it only took that cheap little simple charger
about 30 minutes to bring the battery up enough to start the engine. By the
time I drove the 9 miles to work it was fine.
It just kills me to buy batteries for common stuff. For many years one of
the things we did in our business was sell batteries and we also accepted
old batteries for recycle. We accepted them, we didn't pay anything for
them. You would not believe how many good batteries came in as trade-ins
and for recycling. I always said that more good batteries were replaced due
to bad connections than ever actually failed. People buy a battery and put
it in and everything works OK so they think the old one was really bad when
if they had just cleaned up those horrible terminals they would have been
fine. I used to top off the water (distilled), put them on a charger for a
few hours and load test them. Around 40% of them were fine. I always had
good batteries for my vehicles and tractors and kept much of the family in
batteries. I really miss that supply... I think half of what I own needs a
battery right now.  :-)   This week I need to put a new one in my little
Case VAC that pulls my wood splitter around and pulls a small pickup bed
trailer a lot for chores.
Side note: It is my considered opinion that you almost can't own too many
trailers.  :-)


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-- 
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Francis Robinson
aka "farmer"
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com
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