Quote:
Originally Posted by Jdesign
I dont mind the down time as I have other vehicles to drive. Im curious to see how it drives as it has been on the grid charger for almost two days now.
I attached a porcelain light fixture to the same leads as the grid charger, and let the battery discharge with a 75w bulb. Probably not the best way to do it, now that I am more aware that the slower the discharge the better. Im learning though. After that I just removed the bulb and started the grid charger.
I was considering buying a pack of sticks on ebay if this doesnt help give the battery a little more "life"
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I would not exceed much past 36 hours. Once voltage fails to rise more than 1V in 5-8 hours, the battery is full.
Ah, so you opened the IPU and bypassed the harness altogether. That's what I would expect.
I've seen it done (by me) with 200W to near 0, and that's bad. 75W is only .68A at 110V. At 55V, it was only about .48A.
Those are actually reasonable currents. Due to the potential to pop bulbs running that at well above 110V, I do 2 in series. I use 2X 200W above 144V and 2X 25-40W below 144V. I also limit the TIME spent below 144V to about 9 hours or the time necessary to extract about 1400mAh BELOW 144V (note that the transition from 200W to 25-40W causes a voltage bounce. The clock doesn't start until the pack goes back below 144V). I also use a harbor freight multimeter in 10A mode in series to monitor current. With time and current data, you can compute pack capacity and demonstrate improvements between cycles if they happen.
Bumblebee frequently sells boxes of untested sticks (pulled from returned cores). it's a complete crapshoot. You can get packs with tons of good sticks and packs with none. Unfortunately, you never know which it will be, and you have to test all 20 to find out. Buying a whole pack's worth makes it easier to conduct grid charges/discharges though.
I would hold off and see what happens.
The only concern I have is that you were only at 150v after several hours of charging. However, that may be a non-issue since the MV system is not designed for discharging, it's operating voltage MAY not permit much charging at low voltages, so it's possible very little charging occurred during the initial hours. The HA chargers "pulse" at low voltages as the various power supplies in it actually output greater than the .35A CC supply. This helps bring them up faster from lower voltages.
If the MV charger was pushing the full 300mA for 8 hours, and you were only at 150V, something is likely wrong.
Lastly, after you disconnect the charger, let the pack sit overnight (10+ hours) and then check the 10 tap voltages to XX.XX accuracy. Take the car for a test drive, allow it to sit form 10+ hours and check them again. Those are the most readily accessible way to see if you have issues inside the pack.