Thread: Batteries

Originally Posted by ATH

I'm thinking of an electric bike to give my left ear a rest.
Actually I've been a bit frightened when reading of no new engines available if the worst happens, or the gear changing knob cacking itself through lousy workmanship, but on the other hand it's such s good car to drive and nothing disastrous has happened so I've kept it far longer than I normally do a vehicle.
AlanH.

If I had the later model with the gear knob. I'd just buy one and keep it in the boot. That way you're sorted and can have someone do the repair if it does go bad.

Good idea Josh but then the only prob you have is finding someone who is willing to even look at a Landie when away from the metro area. Maybe I could do it myself as I did heaps of soldering during my apprenticeship many many moons ago.
Maybe I'll buy yet another tool like a good soldering gas torch. Keeping the vehicle is becoming more likely the more I spend. :O
AlanH.

Originally Posted by ATH

Good idea Josh but then the only prob you have is finding someone who is willing to even look at a Landie when away from the metro area. Maybe I could do it myself as I did heaps of soldering during my apprenticeship many many moons ago.
Maybe I'll buy yet another tool like a good soldering gas torch. Keeping the vehicle is becoming more likely the more I spend. :O
AlanH.

I’ve not recently experienced the “we don’t look at Landy” mechanic comments.

I did years ago and he was quite taken aback by my “so you aren’t a competent mechanic” response.

Nowadays they seem to be a lot lore flexible.

Having said that, no mechanic has worked on my vehicles in the last 5 years. All in house nowadays.

Love your wry humour Alan - we think along the same lines - haven't heard about the lack of replacement engines - thats a worry!
As I've always said - you don't just buy a Land Rover, you enter into a marriage contract!

Originally Posted by ATH

I'm thinking of an electric bike to give my left ear a rest.
Actually I've been a bit frightened when reading of no new engines available if the worst happens, or the gear changing knob cacking itself through lousy workmanship, but on the other hand it's such s good car to drive and nothing disastrous has happened so I've kept it far longer than I normally do a vehicle.
AlanH.

I've been playing with battery charging. I bought a programmable bench PSU so I could experiment with charging algorithms.
This is a log of the "monthly top up", I'm not sure how it'll display on the forum so this is an experiment (it's really, really wide). The battery took just over 16Ah until it was "full". 12.2Ah in the bulk phase, the remainder effective in the boost phases.


example.jpg

Edit : The forum scaled it. Original here (use open image in new tab or similar to view full size):
I found an interesting algorithm on a Russian web site for "flooded low maintenance Calcium batteries" and I modified it a little. I expect when I explain it there will be screaming, but as the magic Ford/Lucas smoke is still inside the wires and ECUs I'm still willing to take the chance.

- Bulk charge is fairly conventional at 14.4v to C/20 and current draw is stable for 5 minutes. (00:00-4:45 on the graph)
- Wait until voltage drops to 13.8V and then apply a float of 13.8V. Wait until current drops to C/20 and is stable for 5 minutes. (4:45-4:50)

This is the contentious bit.

- Apply a boost charge of 16V @ 1A. This terminates when the battery reaches 16V or the time exceeds 1 hour.
- Wait for battery to float down to 13.2V

This cycle repeats up to 7 times or if the battery reaches 16V within 10 minutes.
This is the dump from last nights boost cycle.

Code:

['B 3610', 'W 1354', 'B 3610', 'W 2174', 'B 3610', 'W 3494', 'B 1110', 'W 2034', 'B 755', 'W 2484', 'B 625', 'W 2489', 'Bend 545']

It terminated on both cycles and time simultaneously.

So the first cycle it boosted for just over an hour (and hour and 10 seconds) and it took 22 minutes (1354 seconds) to float down to 13.2v (4:50-6:12)
Second cycle boosted for the same and it took 36 minutes to float down to 13.2v (6:12-7:49)
Third cycle boosted for the same and it took 58 minutes to float down to 13.2v (7:49-9:47)
Fourth cycle boosted for 18.5 minutes and it took 34 minutes to float down to 13.2V (9:45-10:40)
Fifth cycle boosted for 13 minutes and took 41 minutes to float down to 13.2v (10:40-11:34)
Sixth cycle took 10 minutes and took 41 minutes to float down to 13.2v (11:34-12:35)
Seventh cycle took 9 minutes and terminated. (12:35-12:45)

- Maintenance charge. Float at 13.2v. (12:34->)

It'll be interesting to see how long this battery lasts. The previous one managed just over 50 months before it died. That only got a 14.8V every couple of months.

On the graph you can clearly see each time something in the car wakes up as a dip in the voltage.

Originally Posted by BradC

I expect when I explain it there will be screaming, but as the magic Ford/Lucas smoke is still inside the wires and ECUs I'm still willing to take the chance.

The smoke may still be in the wires, but you will have damaged it genetically!

What PSU are you using?

I'm getting more fascinated with battery health as time goes on...

I've been charging unhappy batteries on a timer for the last couple months with some successes and some failures, but the failures were already failed.. So only the successes count I guess.

Originally Posted by BradC

I expect when I explain it there will be screaming, but as the magic Ford/Lucas smoke is still inside the wires and ECUs I'm still willing to take the chance.

Hi Brad and not sure what you mean, but if this is a reference to your vehicle's electrics tolerating that 16v.

Then all is well as most vehicle electronics are designed to tolerate at least 18v without any issues.

Boosting the voltage on Calcium/Calcium batteries is actually commonplace and you can do the same with older type Wet Cell/Flooded batteries.

It was actually commonplace to do this years ago with older type deep cycle batteries, but the process has been lost in time.

SPECIAL NOTE DO NOT do this to any form of AGM battery. It will damage them.

Originally Posted by drivesafe

Hi Brad and not sure what you mean, but if this is a reference to your vehicle's electrics tolerating that 16v.

Then all is well as most vehicle electronics are designed to tolerate at least 18v without any issues.

You and I know that, but we also know when it comes to forums and keyboard warriors there's always wailing and gnashing of teeth!

My issue is I couldn't find a battery charger I could make do exactly what I wanted. I was running out of cost effective options and had seriously considered building something when this came along.

Originally Posted by shack

What PSU are you using?

One of these : https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005060176198.html



I haven't taken a close look at the output for noise, but as a programmable battery charger it's great. 30V/10A. It's reasonably accurate +/- ~30mV and there's an odd 30mV jump when it switches from CC to CV mode (you can see the spikes at the end of the last 3 boost cycles).

I have many lab power supplies which I've used for battery charging in the past, but I really wanted one I could remotely control and monitor. For about $150 landed this one does a great job. I had to poke the vendor hard to get the software, and the software it comes with is pretty crap. Like my SkyRC discharge tester I had intended to reverse engineer the protocol and write some software to drive it, but the software came with a "reasonable" doc file with the protocol in it. Win!