What’s your thoughts on pulse chargers? I bought one of those cheap ones and put it on my old AGM battery that was struggling to start my car on cold mornings. It was then sitting in my garage for a year. Hooked it up for a whole day and the Topdon readings have gone from 285 A EN to 520A en “good battery”.
@Mickytdi most smart chargers have pulse charge in them it just helps to breakdown the sulfates on the plates, it won't do miracles but my smart chargers have recovered batteries that would have had no chance of recovering on the alternator or bog standard chargers, so all in all they are good and better than your standard constant voltage chargers, plus you need smart chargers for agm batteries as the basic chargers can cause damage to the battery as agm prefer to charge at a lower voltage than standard lead acid or efb.
I got one of those BT600 today. I tested my 8 month old EFB+. Results a little concerning for such a new battery. Charge is good. Read 12.7v . Came back as good battery but SOH only 71%. I tested it 5 times and wiggled the clamps each time to make sure a good connection. Exact same 71% result each time. Battery rated at 700A EN. Reads 590%. Thoughts?
@Mickytdi I've found that testing as SAE/CCA is a closer reading to the more expensive Testers in EN setting and also on Yuasa warranty testing for their batteries any tester other than their own must be tested as CCA so unless you tested it as CCA give it a test using SAE/CCA Ive just this second done a test on a new yuasa 7096 EN700 ring rbag950 tested it as EN686 SOH 97% the BT600 result in EN was EN604 soh 74% and in CCA measured at cca653 soh 87% so I would at an average test it as cca and add 10% to the bt600 result its not going to be accurate for all tests just what I've had right this second on the 2 Testers hope that helps
@ I also have the Topdon 101 tester for a few years now. Also gives similar results. Just tested my friends 700A En battery and his reads 100% SOH and it’s 2 years old. Interestingly when my car was a month old the battery read 880 A EN. Will try the CCA reading tomorrow
@Mickytdi there are a lot of variables sometimes too many to take into consideration and not all Testers from the same tester manufacturer will give the same reading i had before the bt600 the bt300p and that bugger failed 80% of batteries and compared to a company midtronics i had at the time only 10% or so had actually failed lol. Interestingly, i attended a vw polo last week elderly couple both had polo's both same age, same battery, and very similar milage ie 100 mile difference and 4 years old one still had a good ish battery ie passes a test the other failed miserably
Battery manufacturers clearly state you can’t test a brand new battery with any conductance tester. The results will be unreliable. They need to be conditioned with use.
I know, hence, I tested some used batteries as well. You can test new batteries perfectly fine with the conductance testers but the batteries won't be at perfect health untill after several start cycles but they should still pass a test, if they fail then its pointless fitting it to the car as it will soon come back with a battery fault. This is also one reason hybrid and EV cars go through 12v batteries faster than standard internal combustion engines the current draw when turning them on isn't helping the plates stay in good condition, or condition them in the first place.
@ i found the cheaper Topdon arti 100 a very reliable indicator of my AGM battery failing over time. It was rated at 680 A EN. I watched it gradually drop to 350 A over the years. I could predict it failing with that tool. It started struggling to start at 350 when cold. The new battery i fitted was 760 A en but only read 560 A when new. After a couple months of use it read 790 A
@Mickytdi I've never actually seen a new battery test 200 Amps bellow the rating obviously not impossible lol most of the new batteries I test tend to be the rated number, higher or around 10% bellow the rated number, but your experience shows how much they can improve over time 👍
@ i have noticed temperature can give different results with these testers. I did come across one 5 year old battery that fooled my tester. A friend had a bad battery. My tester read 40 A over it’s rated A and passed it but was still causing intermittent low cranking issues. Do you see much of a Amperage loss before cranking issues? When someone comes to you with battery issues what’s the average SOH % are they reading? I replaced my last battery at 30% SOH. It still was starting but low cranking in frost.
@Mickytdi batteries are a mine field lol I've seen batteries show 800 amps out of 850 but when Cranking the voltage will drop to 2v the fault in the battery can sometimes trick the tester, these Testers are not perfect but they have a good track record, I did a range rover last week because the electronic boot would not lift open but when running it worked fine, the battery passed a test but was only just a pass, new battery on it and the boot was back to normal operation, modern cars have smart charge and stop start and most car manufacturers will have a 60 to 75% SOH replacement figures again this varies between manufacturers, older cars let's say pre 2000 can get away with 45 to 50% SOH before replacement is recommended. If I come across a car that fails a test but only just and once running the battery is accepting 50% or more of the AH then its a good chance a good charge will recover it but if the battery is say accepting less than 30% of its AH it will usually not recover you might get the odd one but most won't tricke chargers can do wonders to recover batteriesbut you will only know once you try to charge it. Temp plays a big part as the temp drops the engine reqs more amps to turn over but the batteries ability to deliver tge Amps drop, so if you have a car that needs say 300 amps to start the car at 20 degrees and the battery has 330 amps it will start fine once you hit say 0 degrees the engine will need say 320 amps but the battery can now only deliver 310 amps it might just catch and start or just not quite make it this is one reason batteries produce more power than needed to allow wear overtime and still be reliable and to deal with the very cold temps some places get, those numbers are just examples lol and not scientifically tested 🤣
What’s your thoughts on pulse chargers? I bought one of those cheap ones and put it on my old AGM battery that was struggling to start my car on cold mornings. It was then sitting in my garage for a year. Hooked it up for a whole day and the Topdon readings have gone from 285 A EN to 520A en “good battery”.
@Mickytdi most smart chargers have pulse charge in them it just helps to breakdown the sulfates on the plates, it won't do miracles but my smart chargers have recovered batteries that would have had no chance of recovering on the alternator or bog standard chargers, so all in all they are good and better than your standard constant voltage chargers, plus you need smart chargers for agm batteries as the basic chargers can cause damage to the battery as agm prefer to charge at a lower voltage than standard lead acid or efb.
I got one of those BT600 today. I tested my 8 month old EFB+. Results a little concerning for such a new battery. Charge is good. Read 12.7v . Came back as good battery but SOH only 71%. I tested it 5 times and wiggled the clamps each time to make sure a good connection. Exact same 71% result each time. Battery rated at 700A EN. Reads 590%. Thoughts?
@Mickytdi I've found that testing as SAE/CCA is a closer reading to the more expensive Testers in EN setting and also on Yuasa warranty testing for their batteries any tester other than their own must be tested as CCA so unless you tested it as CCA give it a test using SAE/CCA
Ive just this second done a test on a new yuasa 7096 EN700 ring rbag950 tested it as EN686 SOH 97% the BT600 result in EN was EN604 soh 74% and in CCA measured at cca653 soh 87% so I would at an average test it as cca and add 10% to the bt600 result its not going to be accurate for all tests just what I've had right this second on the 2 Testers hope that helps
@ I also have the Topdon 101 tester for a few years now. Also gives similar results. Just tested my friends 700A En battery and his reads 100% SOH and it’s 2 years old. Interestingly when my car was a month old the battery read 880 A EN. Will try the CCA reading tomorrow
@Mickytdi there are a lot of variables sometimes too many to take into consideration and not all Testers from the same tester manufacturer will give the same reading i had before the bt600 the bt300p and that bugger failed 80% of batteries and compared to a company midtronics i had at the time only 10% or so had actually failed lol. Interestingly, i attended a vw polo last week elderly couple both had polo's both same age, same battery, and very similar milage ie 100 mile difference and 4 years old one still had a good ish battery ie passes a test the other failed miserably
Battery manufacturers clearly state you can’t test a brand new battery with any conductance tester. The results will be unreliable. They need to be conditioned with use.
I know, hence, I tested some used batteries as well. You can test new batteries perfectly fine with the conductance testers but the batteries won't be at perfect health untill after several start cycles but they should still pass a test, if they fail then its pointless fitting it to the car as it will soon come back with a battery fault. This is also one reason hybrid and EV cars go through 12v batteries faster than standard internal combustion engines the current draw when turning them on isn't helping the plates stay in good condition, or condition them in the first place.
@ i found the cheaper Topdon arti 100 a very reliable indicator of my AGM battery failing over time. It was rated at 680 A EN. I watched it gradually drop to 350 A over the years. I could predict it failing with that tool. It started struggling to start at 350 when cold. The new battery i fitted was 760 A en but only read 560 A when new. After a couple months of use it read 790 A
@Mickytdi I've never actually seen a new battery test 200 Amps bellow the rating obviously not impossible lol most of the new batteries I test tend to be the rated number, higher or around 10% bellow the rated number, but your experience shows how much they can improve over time 👍
@ i have noticed temperature can give different results with these testers. I did come across one 5 year old battery that fooled my tester. A friend had a bad battery. My tester read 40 A over it’s rated A and passed it but was still causing intermittent low cranking issues. Do you see much of a Amperage loss before cranking issues? When someone comes to you with battery issues what’s the average SOH % are they reading? I replaced my last battery at 30% SOH. It still was starting but low cranking in frost.
@Mickytdi batteries are a mine field lol I've seen batteries show 800 amps out of 850 but when Cranking the voltage will drop to 2v the fault in the battery can sometimes trick the tester, these Testers are not perfect but they have a good track record, I did a range rover last week because the electronic boot would not lift open but when running it worked fine, the battery passed a test but was only just a pass, new battery on it and the boot was back to normal operation, modern cars have smart charge and stop start and most car manufacturers will have a 60 to 75% SOH replacement figures again this varies between manufacturers, older cars let's say pre 2000 can get away with 45 to 50% SOH before replacement is recommended. If I come across a car that fails a test but only just and once running the battery is accepting 50% or more of the AH then its a good chance a good charge will recover it but if the battery is say accepting less than 30% of its AH it will usually not recover you might get the odd one but most won't tricke chargers can do wonders to recover batteriesbut you will only know once you try to charge it. Temp plays a big part as the temp drops the engine reqs more amps to turn over but the batteries ability to deliver tge Amps drop, so if you have a car that needs say 300 amps to start the car at 20 degrees and the battery has 330 amps it will start fine once you hit say 0 degrees the engine will need say 320 amps but the battery can now only deliver 310 amps it might just catch and start or just not quite make it this is one reason batteries produce more power than needed to allow wear overtime and still be reliable and to deal with the very cold temps some places get, those numbers are just examples lol and not scientifically tested 🤣