Topic: Battery charging tips; No, seriously

[twright3]

I'm amazed to find I've just learned a couple of useful things about charging batteries after working on vehicles for 50 years...
I'll skip the obvious stuff about hydrogyn, + to +, red etc.
In a car club magazine I get, a battery pro was quoted as saying the vast majority of batteries returned under warranty are fine; they just won't take a regular charge. Almost all modern chargers and trickle chargers won't do anything unless they sense 10v, which indicates a rundown battery is present. This safety feature means not much happens if you accidently touch the clamps together. My nearly new CB750 battery wouldn't charge which the article explained usually means it's totally discharged rather than merely run down. So as advised, I added another battery, in my case from a car, + to + to + and - to - to -. The charger sensed 'a' battery and kept charging until both batteries were fully charged.
The other tip is I discovered that a trickle charger should be disconnected if taking any measurements or probing with a continuity light. It not dangerous because trickle chargers are limited to 1 amp. And it seemed like a good idea to keep the battery tip-top while doing tests that may run it down. But with my Black & Decker trickle charger attached the behavior of the tests became quite strange. So save the recharging for later.

[rocket johnny]

interesting article ,,    this old dog learned a new trick

[newday777]

I guess I must have missed this when you posted it back in January Tom.
A very good tip indeed worthy to be here in the tips section. It sounds familiar like I may have learned to do this back in the late 60s and early 70s when I was learning to do my own mechanics on my vehicles. My parents grew up in the depression Era, my dad's mom rented a farm after his dad died in 1932 of phenomena complications from a barn door breaking his back as it was during the winter, in cold farm house bedroom in New Hampshire.
There were many old Model As and Ts on the property that got brought back to life by various family members who stayed there with my dad's family while trying to get work. Once they had one running, they would load up and head off searching for work elsewhere. And of course the batteries would need to be brought back to life also, so this may have been something that was passed down to me from my dad or his brothers who would often come to our house for the many large gatherings we had in my younger years. Thanks for jogging my dusty memory banks by banking the batteries......

[grcamna2]

The best thing any motorcyclist can do is: keep your battery Hot/Fully Topped-Up. 
We all need a voltmeter on the dash of our bikes:right between the 2 meters.

[RAFster122s]

Learned a way to trigger the nitrogen inflation at Costco when a tire is deflated too far, pull the valve cap off a good tire then when pump starts pull it off and quickly move to the deflated/tire too low to trigger the pump to work, it then continues pumping even though the reading it would get is too low, the initial hit of air pressure withing the threshold will allow it to refill a tire to the pressure you set the pump to operate.

Thanks for sharing the battery / charging tips...

Clean your terminals occasionally so the post and clamp or screw terminals or spade clips on small batteries are clean on both sides of the connection. Makes a huge difference.

Coke can neutralize spilled battery acid or acid that has leaked...

The little red and green post felt washer help keep corrosion down if your battery has automotive style post and clamps.

With traditional lead acid batteries the battery mats that are yellow with red print that some store carry does a nice job of absorbing any leaked acid around the battery, you can trim it to fit and reduce any of the inevitable condensed vapor or acid that leaks from the cell caps that seems to leave a thin film all over the top of a automotive battery and sometimes motorcycle batteries. Trim to fit and if you can leave a little excess around the battery then it will collect the acid rather than leak onto your battery box and drop down from there...