Did I just buy a bad deep cycle?

[ebsworj]

I came home with a new Exide Gold deep cycle battery group27 a few days ago. I went to charge it with my fancy digital smart charger and it read 60% charged from the store so I charged it up then left it sit for over 24 hours at about 60 degrees then I checked the charge and it was down to 65%!

In only one day of sitting NOT being connected to anything it lost 35% of its charge. I have since repeated this test to the same results. The Batt says it was made in June 06 so its not that old.

The receipt says they do not take back batteries that are not deffective. This seems defective to me. Do you guys this its defective? Shouldn't it hold more charge than that?

thanks

 

[tashasdaddy]

Re: Did I just buy a bad deep cycle?

borrow another charger and see it reads the same.

 

[wileecoyote985]

Re: Did I just buy a bad deep cycle?

The link below has some pretty good info on battery care and maintenance.

If you have a digital voltmeter I'd see what the voltage reading is when your charger is saying it's fully charged. Not sure I'd trust a gage on the charger itself.


http://www.batterystuff.com/tutorial_battery.html

 

[Texasmark]

Re: Did I just buy a bad deep cycle?

At about 75F a fully charged battery reads 12.75 volts on a digital voltmeter. A reading of 12.66 is partially discharged.

When charging, the charger has to put out more voltage than the static battery voltage to force current from the charger into the battery. Hence when charging you will read up to 14.5 volts (on a properly working system with a high current capacity.....like an alternator) during charging. A lower voltage (still above the static batt volt) means that you are charging but not at as fast a rate.

So either read your ammeter on your charger, and/or on a second charger, or get out your voltmeter and read the volts while it's charging at the batterie's terminals.

Once you remove the charger it may take 12 to 24 hours for the battery to settle back to it's static voltage.

Mark

 

[ebsworj]

Re: Did I just buy a bad deep cycle?

Well I know its not the charger because my 2 deep cycle batteries on my last boat would hold there charge of over 85% for a week or so.