--------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: EGW00056 Date: 12/26/97 From: ROY J. TELLASON Time: 09:22pm \/To: TOM WALKER (Read 0 times) Subj: Battery Sizes TOM WALKER wrote in a message to PETER HARLE: -> Any ideas on the relation ship of the size number to AH ratings? TW> NONE whatsoever. The 24F Size Battery, and other Battery sizes TW> also, are available is a Wide range of Actual AH ratings. Yep. TW> Basically based on Price, More money buys more AH, although not TW> necessarily. Usually it buys more warranty. TW> Even Physical Size is no sure indication, although generally it TW> is, as the Cheapest size 27 battery could have a slightly lower TW> rating then the Highest rated size 24 battery. When I had that battery store there was only one size of 27 in stock (though we had both polarities of it), and it started out being 650CCA at first, and later on changed to 675. The 24s ran 350, 400, 450, 500 (later changed to 525) and 675. email: roy.j.tellason%tanstaaf@frackit.com --- * Origin: TANSTAAFL BBS 717-432-0764 (1:270/615) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: EGW00057 Date: 12/26/97 From: ROY J. TELLASON Time: 09:24pm \/To: TOM WALKER (Read 0 times) Subj: battery sizes TOM WALKER wrote in a message to ROY J. TELLASON: -> TOM WALKER wrote in a message to JONATHON HANKS: -> -> -> The plates are closer together making them more volatile? I think -> -> that is right!!!!!! -> -> MAYBE! -> -> TW> Well not necessarily so. but with advances in Separator -> TW> material, They used to be Wood, -> -> WOOD? Have you ever seen what battery acid does to wood? No way... TW> Well Roy I have both been in a Battery Rebuild shop and in TW> the early 60's was in charge of the Submarine Base Pearl Harbor TW> Submarine Battery rebuild facility. And they DID USE WOOD TW> separators. Maple as I recall. They must have treated it with something, then, to enable it to withstand the effects of the acid... email: roy.j.tellason%tanstaaf@frackit.com --- * Origin: TANSTAAFL BBS 717-432-0764 (1:270/615) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: EGW00058 Date: 12/26/97 From: ROY J. TELLASON Time: 09:24pm \/To: SUE MERRINER (Read 0 times) Subj: 1970 Dodge Dart Swinger SUE MERRINER wrote in a message to ROY J. TELLASON: -> SM> 1970 Dodge Dart Swinger with rebuilt 318 engine. Excellent -> SM> condition. no e-check necessary. leave e-mail for -> SM> sue.merriner@insanitybbs.com if interested. -> Heh. I had one of those, nice car... SM> If you're interested in owning another one, this one is for SM> sale. I wouldn't mind having another one, but am not really in the market for another vehicle at this point in time. Plus I don't have any place to put it, nor do I have the option of the time to mess with it, since I've got this truck I'm building... Besides, it's in Ohio and I'm not, and you don't mention a price. Two-door, I presume? email: roy.j.tellason%tanstaaf@frackit.com --- * Origin: TANSTAAFL BBS 717-432-0764 (1:270/615) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: EGW00059 Date: 12/26/97 From: ROY J. TELLASON Time: 09:34pm \/To: BILL REYNA (Read 0 times) Subj: SEARS CAR BATTERY! Bill Reyna wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason: > JR> I bought a DIEHARD from SEARS earlier this year. > You got yourself an Exide battery, then. BR> [----------^^^^ you said the above ^^^^-----------] BR> Not always true as Johnson Controls provides for them also. It's my understanding that they used to, and lost the contract... email: roy.j.tellason%tanstaaf@frackit.com --- * Origin: TANSTAAFL BBS 717-432-0764 (1:270/615) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: EGW00060 Date: 12/26/97 From: ROY J. TELLASON Time: 09:40pm \/To: MARK LOGSDON (Read 0 times) Subj: Battery sizes Mark Logsdon wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason: RJ> I have a bunch of gels and two RV batteries and a group 34 sitting in RJ> the room here at the moment, that I have to see to every so often. RJ> Like every couple of months or so. One of these days I'm gonna set up RJ> some kind of an automatic charging system for them. ML> Yeah, I just pulled the battery from my lawn tractor for the ML> winter. What I really need to do is to design an electronic ML> regulator for my tractor's alternator. It charges at about ML> 15.0 volts or a little higher and tends to boil the battery dry. The simplest setup I've seen is the two-terminal (plus ground, I suppose) of the Chrysler product I tend to drive mostly... You should be able to snag one at a junkyard cheap, to play with. This tractor has no regulator in it? email: roy.j.tellason%tanstaaf@frackit.com --- * Origin: TANSTAAFL BBS 717-432-0764 (1:270/615) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: EGW00061 Date: 12/26/97 From: ROY J. TELLASON Time: 09:52pm \/To: RONNIE THOMPSON (Read 0 times) Subj: Battery Terminals Ronnie Thompson wrote in a message to TOM WALKER: -=> Quoting TOM WALKER to RONNIE THOMPSON <=- -> CGM> Why do cars now have battery terminals made of steel instead of -> lead, -> CGM> as in the old days (I'm referring to top terminals, not side)? -> I've never seen a battery with a steel post. Who makes em? TW> All Lead Acid Automobile Batteries still have Lead or Lead TW> Plated posts. It is the cable ends that sometimes have steel ends on TW> them. Although most I have seen still have a very thin plating of TW> lead. But some do not. RT> I've seen the cable ends with steel, mostly on smaller vehicles RT> of foreign manufacturers (used to be foreign anyhow), yet RT> I've never seen a battery with steel, such as George (Curious RT> George) asked about. Actually, those are plated copper. Look at one that's gotten all corroded up, the powder there is *green*, typical of copper sulfate... I saw more battery terminals than I ever wanted to during my time at that battery store, and many of them were corroded. Standard procedure in those cases (and this applies to holddown hardware too) was to take a cup, put some warm water in it (especially when it was cold outside!), and dissolve as much baking soda as you could in it. Then you dip the wire ends, hardware, etc. in there until it stops fizzing. If there's still corrosion left you replenish the mixture and do it again. In the case of those sheet metal terminals used on much of the import stuff it was obvious after a while that they were made of copper, not steel. Oh yeah, and if the stuff was done fizzing and got all the corrosion (there was some active baking soda left in the can), I'd dump it into the battery tray. This would get anything in there, and make a bunch of nasty-looking (but innocuous) stains in the parking lot. :-) email: roy.j.tellason%tanstaaf@frackit.com --- * Origin: TANSTAAFL BBS 717-432-0764 (1:270/615) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: EGW00062 Date: 12/26/97 From: ROY J. TELLASON Time: 09:56pm \/To: RONNIE THOMPSON (Read 0 times) Subj: Battery sizes Ronnie Thompson wrote in a message to JAY EMRIE: -=> Quoting JAY EMRIE to MARK LOGSDON <=- JE> Mark, I don't think your analogy will float. I've been there and done JE> that. Tried to jumper a car with a dead battery. The jumper cables got JE> too hot to touch in just seconds. Turned out the car battery that was JE> "dead" actually had a direct INTERNAL short. Didn't affect my battery JE> or alternator one iota (that a bit of recharging didn't correct). RT> You were VERY lucky. If the one battery had a true short RT> like you are saying, there would usually have been a VERY RT> STRONG spark, when you connected the jumper cables. I've RT> seen batteries explode, as a result of an internal short, RT> and it is NOT a pretty sight. On the other hand I've never seen a battery go completely dead short. I've seen them get one (or maybe two) shorted cells, but not the whole battery at once. I've also seen a situation where a short in a vehicle will drain one down until there's literally zero volts showing at the terminals, but that's not a fault in a battery. I had one guy who had a tractor-trailer rig come to the store one time, this puppy had _four_ group 31 batteries in there that read 11-1/2 volts across them right after he'd shut the rig off. I pulled all of the ground wires and measured them individually, and just from the short time I had the wires off three of them came back up over 12 volts while the other one went to about 10-1/2, it had a shorted cell in it and was pulling the other three down a bit. email: roy.j.tellason%tanstaaf@frackit.com --- * Origin: TANSTAAFL BBS 717-432-0764 (1:270/615) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: EGW00063 Date: 12/26/97 From: ROY J. TELLASON Time: 10:01pm \/To: TOM WALKER (Read 0 times) Subj: Battery sizes TOM WALKER wrote in a message to ROY J. TELLASON: -> I dunno, in this particular case I didn't have to pull them, the gu -> brought them in. I remember one where they had a group 27 and an 8D TW> The good old 8D size battery. That is mostly a Large Marine TW> Diesel Starting battery or power battery fro larger sail boats. I saw a fire engine one time that used a pair of them. The guy who brought the engine in wasn't pleased when I pulled the caps and they were both bone dry. TW> QUITE heavy aren't they? :-) When I had someone who wanted one of those, I'd point out to them that there was a handle on *that* end, while standing near the other end. I think the ones we carried were about 134 lbs. or so. TW> Things are very complicated now in battery sizes but as I TW> remember it in the old days you had the Size 30, The 4D and 8D TW> in increasing sized Marine use batteries. The 30 was one we carried but it wasn't used much. We had a 4D, and also a 4DLT, somewhat smaller (only a little!), and those two were used in some models of tractor! Then there were a couple of "group 4" six volt batteries that weren't related to those at all, and a 5 as well in six volt. -> TW> And the pellets reduces the water replenishment requirements. -> TW> But you are right it does make it difficult to use a -> TW> hydrometer. But Hydrometer checking is highly overrated since -> TW> typically only the Water evaporates so as long as you don't let -> TW> the Electrolyte level drop below the plate tops by adding water -> TW> NO hydrometer checks are necessary. -> -> Nonsense. It's the best way to tell both the state of charge of a ba -> and the relative condition (you want all of the cells to be reading p -> much the same). Overall, I'd say it's a highly under-rated test. TW> If a battery comes in and Fails the Load test and You charge TW> it appropriately and it still fails what would be the basic TW> Assumption? To me it would mean Replace the Battery. No Need to TW> Fool Around with Hydrometer readings. Yeah, but how do you know when it's charged? Sure, there were automatic chargers around the place, but they could take *days* to bring a battery back up. It was also useful to be able to stick a hydrometer in the battery in the first place to tell if that low voltage you were looking at was a discharged battery (in which case it was worth putting on the charger) or a shorted cell (in which case trying to charge it would have been a waste of time). Stuff like that... -> TW> And then an Individual cell voltage test can be done as a -> TW> follow up for verification. -> -> And how do you do one of those when you don't have any access -> to cell-to-cell connections, as is the case with most of the -> newer stuff there? TW> We were talking about Removable Cap batteries here so just TW> stick the Meter probe in the Cell hole until it touches the TW> Electrolyte. Put one probe on the Neg terminal and go across TW> the holes noting the increasing voltage. From that you can TW> determine the voltage of each cell. I didn't have any sort of meter that you could stick in to battery cells, perhaps that's something I'll have to look into one of these days... email: roy.j.tellason%tanstaaf@frackit.com --- * Origin: TANSTAAFL BBS 717-432-0764 (1:270/615) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: EGW00064 Date: 12/26/97 From: ROY J. TELLASON Time: 10:08pm \/To: TOM WALKER (Read 0 times) Subj: Battery sizes TOM WALKER wrote in a message to JAY EMRIE: -> No, the single most disasterous possibility is the reversal of one -> set of cables, thus putting reverse polarity on alternator diodes amd -> blowing them! TW> NOT true at all, ALL diodes are rated for a certain PEAK TW> REVERSE voltage. And I can assure you Alternator Diodes are TW> rated far higher then 12- 15 volts available from a battery TW> jump. In fact at one time there was a conversion kit fro TW> campers that allowed the standard Vehicle Alternator. With TW> an External regulator, to Put out 110 Volts DC for whatever TW> you needed it for. Lights and Universal Drill Motors, and TW> other AC/DC rated appliances. The Diodes stood up quite well TW> so I assume the Inverse Voltage rating is something MORE TW> than 110 Volts. I'd guess that this kit you're talking about was involving the use of a transformer in there someplace (I've heard of people tapping into alternators _before_ the diodes for just that purpose) but in any case if you have info on it I'd sure like to know more about it... email: roy.j.tellason%tanstaaf@frackit.com --- * Origin: TANSTAAFL BBS 717-432-0764 (1:270/615) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 246 AUTOMOTIVE Ref: EGW00065 Date: 12/26/97 From: ROY WITT Time: 04:48pm \/To: PAT BREEDEN (Read 0 times) Subj: 1987 Chrysler On, 26 Dec 97 at 01:18, Pat Breeden was overheard shouting over the engine noise, saying something to All about "1987 Chrysler",: PB> Captain's Log: StarDate=>>> (Thursday) December 25, 1997 8:19pm PB> PB> Here's another problem with my mom's 1987 Chrysler. The electronic PB> odometer quit working and now just shows ------ blank where it used PB> to show the mileage. Two questions, why did they make the PB> odometer electronic, what possessed them, and what is wrong with it PB> exactly is it something with the computer part of the car and how PB> much do you estimate it would cost to fix it? Make that three PB> questions. :-) The driver's side electric window quit working and I PB> was just wondering what the steps are to remove the inside door panel PB> to get at the motor and guts inside the door? It never hurts to get PB> a few hints once in a while. She has been advised by a mechanic to PB> get rid of the car, but she likes it for some reason. The cure for what ails this car is; Open the gas filler door, remove the gas cap, insert bed sheet until it's soaked with gasoline. Light with match and run... ... The NEC chuckled when I cut the feed to San Antonio's worst..:) --- * Origin: Bow Tie Racers, Been There, WON That! (1:202/909.13)