Battery Conductance Tester

[Dockhead]

I have one of these -- I forgot the make, but it's a fairly expensive professional one. I like it.

Forget about the CCA numbers -- you don't need them. That's only needed for the device to calculate a % of full capacity, something you can do yourself better by starting to test the batteries when new (or test a new example of your type of battery).

Anyway you're going to care much more about consistency between cells and batteries, than about the absolute numbers, and your device will give you data to do that without entering any CCA or AH information. Just skip those steps.

Edit: My tester is one of these: http://www.argusanalyzers.com/batter...analyzers.html

[Maine Sail]

Originally Posted by HopCar

I used one of these for a couple of years until one of my customers bought it off me.Features:

If I am not mistaken that unit is a Midtronics MDX-640, or similar, analyzer relabeled for Newmar. You're likely to find the same analyzer in a Midtronics for less $$$..

As has been said you don't need the CCA to test the batteries. However without testing them when new, using the same analyzer, and in their current condition, you won't really have a baseline to work from.

Tell us what the batteries are and one of us may have the CCA rating for them when new...


MDX-640 (Image courtesy Midtronics)

[tuberider]

I'll have to check them out monday. they're sealed acid eight, 6v batteries in series parallel. If you use the tester without using a cca with it tell you if a cell is bad. What happened is my inverter went to float mode but was still putting out 70 amps. Two of the 6volts batteries,connected in series, where so hot you couldn't hardly touch them. I went and borrowed a series 31
12v battery and hooked it up to the inverter by itself and the inverter worked perfect. I would think that those two batteries would have to be bad, but don't want to rely on just a load test on the other six. These testers seem a little expensive so i might just take the two hot batteries out of the equation, and load test the other six and hook the inverter back up.

[CharlieJ]

For the record, there is no relationship between CCA and Ahr capacity.

For the OP, if the batteries were "...you couldn't hardly touch them.", they have failed internally, probably by shorting between cells. They have become very inefficient heaters, are dangerous and should be immediately removed and properly discarded. Load test the other batteries with a simple carbon pile (Harbor Freight) tester to see if they have any useful life left.

[mbianka]

I used a Centech Battery tester and a filament load tester when I found one of my sealed AGM batteries was not completing a charge:
THE BIANKA LOG BLOG: BATTERY INVESTIGATION PART 8: LOAD TESTING
Glad I did not pitch it out like most people would do. After removing a parasitic load the battery it came back to life quite nicely after a few charges.