21 RX350 and a PulseTech XC400

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Patrick0525

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Picked up an off-lease RX350 with an abused battery that neither the Lexus technicians or the customer paid attention. If the health drops below 60% just buy a new replacement battery.

This is a 3yr old rated at 585 cca. At the Lexus dealer’s lot, the original battery’s health was 67%. No pic. Kind of sad for a Clarios battery. I was disappointed that I may have to install my backup Optima 24F from storage.

Got home and connected it to the XC400 charger and it took 3hrs to reach 50%. Not good at all. I disconnected it and went to bed. Woke up Sunday morning to take a measurement. 1st pic

I checked and it was low on water.
Added distilled h2o + 4hrs charging and still at 50%+ stopped for 2hrs + 10hrs from 50% to 100% + 6hrs float charge. 2nd pic

Guarantee this battery was de-sulfurnated.



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I did 4hrs using the XC400 at the 100% with de-sulfurnation. Sometimes the charging led was turned on and at other times off. Next I put it on the BatteryMinder trickle charger and went to sleep for 8hrs.
Next morning, I drove a total of two hours round trip to work and re-measured. Amazing.

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Ok, I am OCD and have been desulfanating for the last 3 days using the XC400 to get it to 100% before switching to the BatteryMinder 12117’s float/maintenance mode. I just got back from a 40min round trip to the Toyota dealer and the results are amazing. The 1st pic was taken in morning before I went to the Toyota sdralet.

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Got up and tested @6:30AM expecting great numbers.
Disappointed that it looked overcharged. I decided to wait an 1hr and do a re-measurement.
Not surprisingly back to the original baseline numbers the yesterday morning with around 625+ CCA. Thinking that hard sulfates need more solvent to re-dissolve, I decided that I am adding more distilled H2O via a syringe.

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Installed 12V sae and an on-board PulseTech desulfurnator - constantly drawing 5mA.

10hrs on BatteryMinder 12117 float @13.6V
1hr rest disconnected
30 sec headlights on
Measure using Ancel BA101

Probably will buy the BatteryMinder 2012 to reduce the float to 13.2V and get thermal control charging,


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SubLGT said:
Cheap digital battery testers can mislead you. Testing SOC immediately after charging or driving the vehicle will give misleading results. Add a battery hydrometer and a 1000A carbon pile tester to your testing arsenal to get a truer picture of your battery performance.
Click to expand...
For the SOC, I waited 60 min and turned on the headlight for 30sec. Waiting 24 hrs is a better SOC measurement but the objective is to progressively restore and measure the internal resistance drop via desulphanation.

I am not a fan of the 1000A carbon pile since it destroys any remaining useful and kills a borderline battery.

As a side note:
When my father went to the cardiologist for his stress test they would treadmill test him near his maximum heart rate without him going into a cardiac event - ie heart attack. A better assessment is measuring heat rate recovery from near maximum heart rate. Normal healthy hearts drop 20-25 beats in the 1st minute. Unhealthy hearts drop less than 10 beats and need to see a cardiologist immediately. Prime Olympic level athletes drop 30 to 50 beats in the 1st minute because of their heart capacity to deliver.
 
On the Batteryminder 12117 for 24 hrs + with 30sec headlights on.
I bought a Batteryminder 2012. Results tomorrow.

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So I connected the battery on the new BatteryMinder 2012. Despite it was in maintenance mode using the 12117, it still took 60 min to go full charge and in maintenance mode.

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I forget the exact program that the 2012 uses, but I believe it is always going to charge for minimum time before going to maintenance mode, even on a fully charged battery. I have a 2012 AGM and a 128CEC and if I plug in any of my cars after a drive it will still perform the multi step charge for up to four hours before maintenance mode (float) kicks in (on a presumably close to full charged battery). My other battery tenders will go to float often times within 20 minutes.

I also note that the smaller "wall wart" battery tenders of 800ma to 1.5amp can typically bring a battery to a slightly higher state of charge than a 4amp or larger battery tender.
 
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Tuesday nite 7:40pm pic 1

So it was on the 2012 for 16hrs.
Wed afternoon 3:30pm pic 2

Drove it Wed’s afternoon to the dealer for service.
Pick up Thursday at noon and waited 3hrs. Pic 3

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f355spider said:
I forget the exact program that the 2012 uses, but I believe it is always going to charge for minimum time before going to maintenance mode, even on a fully charged battery. I have a 2012 AGM and a 128CEC and if I plug in any of my cars after a drive it will still perform the multi step charge for up to four hours before maintenance mode (float) kicks in (on a presumably close to full charged battery). My other battery tenders will go to float often times within 20 minutes.

I also note that the smaller "wall wart" battery tenders of 800ma to 1.5amp can typically bring a battery to a slightly higher state of charge than a 4amp or larger battery tender.
Click to expand...
It took the 2012 1.5 hrs to go through its profile to get to maintenance mode despite the soh:100%;soc:98%;interal resistance 4.51mohns

I got home at noon and the car sat in the garage 6hrs before measurements and charging.
 
BM 2012 4hrs -> disconnected 6hrs rest -> added h20 -> make measurement (see pic) -> start 2012 @7:00-> it took the 2012 approx 60min @8:00 to goto maintenance mode. Shorter than before so the 2012 does have some profile intelligence. Float is a gentle 13.17V and not the older 12117 float @13.6V




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Does your 12117 have temperature compensation?
I spoke with their tech support summer 2023 and was told they changed the algorithm on all their battery tenders to lower the float voltage about .2 volts a couple years prior. They never updated their documentation to this change...and still haven't. They say this was done due to customer complaints of over charging.
 
f355spider said:
Does your 12117 have temperature compensation?
I spoke with their tech support summer 2023 and was told they changed the algorithm on all their battery tenders to lower the float voltage about .2 volts a couple years prior. They never updated their documentation to this change...and still haven't. They say this was done due to customer complaints of over charging.
Click to expand...
My 12117 does not have temp compensation and has black face and the float voltage is 13.6V. It is ok for an AGM according to Odyssey custom service but too much for a flooded cell. I am not happy with the Northern Tools 12117tc and return it since their algorithm profile tried to charge at 14.4v for hours on a fully charged battery. I returned it and bought the 2012. It looks I am maximizing the battery’s internal storage capacity.
I am posting an update below.
 
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Post #16 is an immediate measurement after I added several mls of water. A 3rd time to optimize water level.
24hrs later a new measurement @8:30

In summary, started at 560cca with 3hrs charging on xc400 to 653cca exclusively on the 2012 - approx 52hrs total.

Note: As previously posted, I was using a combination xc400 and 12117 for several days and could only get a max of 635 CCA. I observed the xc400 maintenance mode still was charging at 14.4V so I went to the 12117 maintenance but it was at 13.6V. Too high for my taste as a long-term battery maintenance strategy for an 3 yr old battery.


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After another 24hrs @7:00 on the 2012. CCA and internal resistance essentially did not change. SOC dropped slightly. Return to maintenance including the 10 min testing mode took a total 30min.

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