deca batteries,your experience.

[masterblaster]

left my bilge running,discharged the deca completly,was trying to charge it with a smart charger at 10 amps,kept getting a F01 reading for a dead cell,kept hitting it with 10 and 15 amp attemps till I could get it to maintain a charge at the 6 amp settting then finished it on 2 amps. It took a full charge after a few hrs.

So if ya have some deca batts sitting around ya thought were dead try hitting them with some high amps first,then finish them on 6 and see if they come up?

 

[meatball]

My Deka is 6 years old, never fully discharged, and I usually only put it on a 3 amp charge.

Does the smart charger come with a DC power supply? I made my own 10 amp supply out of a PC power supply.

What was the voltage reading on the battery before you did this?

"The lead acid battery should never be left to set in the discharged condition or sulfation will result. The sulfuric acid in the electrolyte reacts with the sponge lead active material and forms lead sulfate. It is a poor conductor. This coupled with the H2O left after you take all the S out of H2SO4 is also a poor conductor so trying to charge requires a lot of voltage to push the current through required to convert the active material back to the charged state. Sometimes they just cannot be brought back from the sulfated state."

Quote from battery clinic

Unfortunately its true, unless you hit it hard with a good high voltage or high current charge quickly after its fully discharged, its gone for good after a certain point (Id guess a day or two) I hope you dont usually charge at 6 amps, you should never charge over 1/10 the max discharge rating.

 

[keefer]

Thats good info about the AGM battery on a deep discharge. I have a Deka, but have never had to manually recharge it yet. I know that they are picky about the recharge cycle and you can easily cook one if you don't use the right charger. I have had mine for going on 3 years and it is the best battery I have had.

 

[meatball]

Hehe, thats why I got a computer charger a while ago, I can charge any chemistry available, up to 24 cells, up to I think 25 amps (but my power supply is only good to 10). Most cheap chargers just taper off the voltage, whilst gel cells need a constant voltage charger, with instead the current tapering off. The cheap ones work, but decrease battery life.

BTW, did you know you CAN charge disposable alkaline batteries? With the right settings it works.

 

[masterblaster]

I thought 6 amps is what works best for the deka and oddesey agm batts when they are close to fully discharged,to get them back to peak voltage,my smart charger uses 6 amps then when the batt gets close to full charge it drops back to 2 amps,then goes to trickle after that.
If the battery just needs topped off once in awhile I use the 2 amp setting, So is this good or is there a better way?

 

[meatball]

I dont know what the max C rating of the small PWC batts are, so I wouldnt know, but your smart charger is doing the right thing by backing off in amps at the end of the charge. If you can ever get the max discharge rate from the company, divide it by 10 and you have your charge rating. I use 3 to be conservative. I doubt they'd give you an accurate discharge rating as well.

As for getting it back from full discharge, I've never tried it, but as per the chemistry, a high voltage rather then a high current charge would be best. But you can only program that on certain chargers, and even then most wont let you, if your battery works doing that though, I wouldnt worry about it.

 

[masterblaster]

good info,I dont know think the max discharge rate divided by 10 would be as high as 6 amp ,but i was pretty sure thats what they wanted ya to usue on a heavly discharged deka?