Battery Tender and Electrolysis

[DGXSER]

I have a Schumacher Battery Tender, it has a light for charging, charged and check battery. I am trying to use it to perform electrolysis on my project bikes tank. I notice that when I connect the leads it will go to charging for maybe a minute then goes to check battery setting.

IS it still working for the electrolysis at that point? Do I need to get an actual charger to do this?

[bikerphil]

Not sure 'bout that DG, but you could check the amp draw with a DMM. The tender might think that there's a problem with the "battery" it's connected to. If it's one of those 1.5 amp ones, that might be too weak anyway.

[Larrym]

Meter Time!!

Some tenders/chargers have a safety feature which requires the charger to sense a voltage between the charging leads from the battery being charged before the charger itself will output voltage/current. This minimizes sparks when connecting the device.

To test if your tender has this feature just leave the charger leads disconnected, connect the charging leads to a voltmeter, and plug the charger/maintainer into the wall. If the meter reads 12.5 or above then your likely ok. If not then you've got the safety feature.

Also ensure that the meter still reads voltage after a few minutes. It may also be that the tender overheats from putting out its max voltage/current over time.

Never seen it posted how much current at what voltage works well for your task. On the positive side, using the tender will be safer/slower even if you have to play peek-a-boo for a couple days..

HTH.

[DGXSER]

Well, I went back and reset everything, moving the electrode in the tank a bit and it seems to be staying in the charge position now.

One way or another there is defintiely stuff in the water and gathering on the rod.

[dbeardslee]

Some battery chargers run in an automatic mode where they sense the condition of the battery and adjust the amps to keep from cooking the battery. Some chargers have a manual mode that bypasses this feature. It's usually the higher end charges that are automatic. I've got a real old charger that throws a constant 4 amps - no matter what. It'll fry a battery if you aren't careful, but it works great for electrolysis. You're welcome to borrow it if you have any more trouble.

[DGXSER]

This morning it looked pretty merky in the water and when I pulled the rod otu it was coated with all sorts of nastiness. So I dumped the water out and saw nothing but metal. Put some oil in it and such to keep the metal from rusting (hopefully). Looks like the charger kept at it until the rod was so coated it could no longer conduct. Not sure what some of the stuff on there was, but it wasn't metal. Looked like crusty stuff on crap on the bottom of the ocean!!

[fredintoon]

I have a Schumacher Battery Tender, - - -

Hi DGXSER,
after hearing my revised over-winter battery maintenance plan (Go straight to step 14, toss the old battery and buy a new one a week before first Spring startup) my son bought me one of those. The label sez it's got charge mode, maintenance mode and de-sulphating mode.
So I read the little bilingual (English & Spanish) booklet that's in the package to find out how to drive the thing.
Well, there's more safety warnings than you'd find on the battery room hatch of a diesel-electric submarine but operating instructions? Not so much.
There ain't no switches on it so does it automatically switch from charge to maintain to de-sulphate or what?

[DGXSER]

Hey Fred,

Mine is older than the de-sulphating models so I don't have a clue about that. But they do automatically switch from charging to off or stand by. More or less a trickle charger that knows when the battery is fully charged and kicks off. When it drips charge it kicks back on to recharge it.