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Received October 31, 1997 Its been a year or so since I posted that I was trying out a pulse system on one of our conversions. It is a government truck (Chev S-10 ) that we converted about five years ago with a 120 Volt trojan T145 battery pack and a K&W charger. The first set of batteries went 3 years which I thought was good considering how little maintenance they got. It went through lots of water ( when they remembered to put it in ). We installed new batteries in March of 96. I checked the truck again in 6 months and found the finish voltage had been turned down from 148 Volts to 140 Volts. When I tried turning it up, the charger would never taper down to finish voltage and just keep pumping in 10 amps. I kept the truck for a few weeks and slowly got the charge voltage back up to 148 volts. The specific gravity varied from 1275-1300. I had a visit from the manufacturer of the Can-Pulse charge partners and they suggested I install a 12V unit on two of the batteries and see if they improved. The day the truck left I installed one of the charge partners on two of the worst batteries. Its now been a year since I have seen the truck which came in for a yearly check up last week. The pack voltage was 149.7 and the specific gravity is 1300 on ALL cells! I called the park ranger who used the truck and asked how the water consumption was. She said it only needed topping up twice all year and she checked it often because the year before it used an average of 2 gallons a month. When you look down the fill holes the plates look new and firm and the electrolyte is clear. I just put another charge partner on the 12V accessory battery in my Nissan truck to see if it will bring back a nearly dead battery with a SG of 1245-1260. This is a small U1 size battery that's 3 years old and always on charge from the PC-40 Todd DC-DC. The truck went out today for a 3 week demo and I will post the results when the truck comes back. If that works I will install one of the larger Motive power pulsers on the Nissans main pack and see if it will revive the failing Trojans. I don't usually post about the products we sell, but I thought you would all be interested in this.
BFN
Randy Holmquist |