Quote:
Originally Posted by Laird Scooby
Many good points there Ian - your Bosch Silver battery is Silver-Calcium and you must be one of the lucky ones that the battery has a lower concentration of silver-calcium than it should and consequently charges ok on 14.4V from your alternator - unless of course your alternator has been replaced with a later "smart" alternator.
As for the USB device, the calibration of those isn't great - i have two similar devices, one is a twin charging USB port with built-in voltmeter and the other is a combination voltmeter, clock and internal/external thermometer. Both are aftermarket items from Chinabay.
At 14.0V battery/system voltage, the latter of the two items reads 13.7-13.8V, at system voltage of 14.4V it reads 14.4V.
The other one can read anything up to 1V above the system voltage so i've seen it reading 16.1V but when the voltage drops to 13.7-13.8V, it's accurate - lower than that it shows 11.6 when the battery is showing 12.2V.
For reference, the former of these is on a system that charges at 14.4-14.0V and the latter on 15.1-14.7V, originally the latter was also 14.4-14.0V but i've boosted it to cope with the calcium battery that landed when i ordered a non-calcium variety.
|
Dave we have debated this before, to restate
There are many reference by trustworthy sources explaining that the calcium change increases the charge tolerance, this does not increase the starting charging voltage. 12V batteries will start charging at any voltage above about 12.6V or so, its just very slow. If there is energy going into the battery it is charging. Even the dodgy wiki states that the problem is the battery not getting fully charged, not that it starts charging at a higher voltage. It will not get fully charged simply if it is not given enough time to charge. This is a common today in new car bought by pensioners who drive the car for 5mins to the shop.
The history seems to be a vehicle manufacturer (Ford) stating that you cannot fit other types of battery other than the one supplied by them (requiring a specific calcium chemistry). There are many online reference specifically dissagreeing with this and that it is classic anti-repair misinformation.
There are also a number of people experiencing charging problems with newer batteries, this guy tells you all you need to know';
"I'm just going to ignore the science, we don't need facts", he then goes to show his charging system is working at 13V-13.7V, which he thinks is normal (although he doesn't show the load state of the electrical system, possibly this is just at idle with no other loads).
He blames the battery because its calcium, and upgrades his charging system to 14.5V and for some reason his high load loses are now only 0.4V instead of around 1V. His system is now working at the voltage it was intended for some of the time, other times its higher than it should be (14.1-14.5). Possibly it was just his brush/regulator module that was the problem.
https://youtu.be/RQFttbZnIfw