Do you know all about Battery Load Testers?

If you need to know more about battery, battery load tester and other battery related issues you can sometimes be buried in information when you try to do some research on them. These can be conflicting too but you can get some better ideas about the batteries, how they work and other important technologies which will not bury you with a bunch of needless technical data. Technical data about batteries can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer but this article will try to boil the data down for easier understanding.

For resolving any battery issue you need to understand the battery problems well. For gaining better battery performance, longevity and reliability you need to work on some tutorial or you can go through the article to have some basic ideas.

A battery is said to have been like a piggy bank. It is said so because of you take everything out without putting anything in it one day you will have nothing in hand. The chassis battery power requirements are huge these days. Today’s vehicles and thousands of electrical devices are simply unthinkable without sufficient battery power. The poor battery condition can cause damage to components of expensive electronic devices. The life span of the battery is always becoming shorter and the requirements of energy are always increasing. The span of life for a battery varies from 6 months to 48 months but there is hardly any battery now a day which can have life span of 48 months.

Proper maintenance of battery is important. You can clean up the battery using some baking soda, water solution and a couple spoons to a pint of water. You need to make sure you have cleaned up the wires and cable connections because the root cause for many battery problems starts with the loose cable connections or dirty wires. Make sure the fluid level of the battery is checked properly. Using the distilled water is the best option because that guaranties against any type of contamination of cells. Overfilling the battery cells is needed to be checked specially in warm weather because that can cause the fluid expansion in the hot weather. This can push excess electrolytes from the battery. You can use a small bead of the silicone sealer at the base of the post to prevent the corrosion. You can also place a felt battery washer over it. You can then cover or coat the washer either with petroleum jelly or with high temperature grease. Then it’s time to place the cable on the post and then you can tighten it. The exposed end of the cable can be coated with the grease. This is important because many of you may not know the fact that the gases from the battery that is condensed on the metal parts of the battery cause the most of the corrosions.

For knowing how the battery is working and how can the performance can be improved you can test the load testing of battery using battery load tester. You can do the load testing in many ways. The one method which is accurate and simple is the measurement of specific gravity and battery voltage. You can buy a battery load tester to test the sealed battery. For measuring the specific gravity you can use a temperature compensating hydrometer and for measuring the voltage you can use a digital D.C. Voltmeter.

For using any of these methods you will need to charge the battery before you take the measurements. Make sure the surface charge is removed after charging the battery. You can then leave the battery sitting for several hours at least. Keeping that for 12 hours would be great! Then you can begin the testing of the battery. You need to keep the battery discharged for several minutes before removing the surface charge. You can use a high beam headlight to do the trick. You can start the testing after turning off the light.

Load testing is yet another useful way. In load testing the amps is removed from the battery just like starting an engine. You can get the battery load tester from any auto parts store. Some of the battery companies often label their batteries with the amp load for the load testing. The number for the testing is generally 1/2 of the CCA rating. It means that if you are using a battery with 500CCA it will load test at 250 amps for 15 seconds. But when you are about to load charge the battery you will need to make sure the battery is fully charged or at least nearly full charged because without that the load test can’t perform the testing.

The time is important when you are about to purchase a battery. You should be careful that time to choose the right kind of battery. Being careful that time can save you from hundreds of hazards at a later time. You can purchase a battery with the best reserve capacity or the amp hour rating. You also need to consider the cable hook up, terminal type, physical size of the battery and other important things. You can give preference to the Absorbed Glass Mat or AGM or the Gel Cell over the Wet Cell. It is better for harsh conditions. This is good when you are not going to maintain or charge the battery on regular basis.

At the time of purchase you also need to make sure the battery is well suited for the purpose it is being bought. You need to make sure the deep cycle batteries and the engine starting batteries are different. Freshness in the battery is important. The more time a battery will sit and won’t be recharged there should be more damage. You can rightly asses the time of manufacture from the code written on the product. Most of the companies use the alphabets to indicate the months. Like ‘A’ refers to January but the letter ‘I’ is not used since it can be confused with 1. However, the number is used to indicate the year. Like the number 4 indicates 2004. So, if there is any code stating the product as C4, it means that the product was manufactured on March 2004.