Can you fry a battery with CTEK Stage 6? Or does that help it

Is damage to the battery occuring, or can it take it?..

I may just go out there and put it on NORMAL setting. I can hear the cells "boiling" but I always thought that was normal. It gets hotter when in the actual car engine bay running I'm sure...

The manufacturer of the Autopart International battery is listed on it as Clarios. Never heard of them.

You took some life out of it.

It won't go dead if you drive it but it regularly but it won't be fully charged either.

I put a maintainer/ charger on a 2 weeks no driving.
 
GMW, Interesting data on your sealed maintenance free batteries. Opposite of my limited observations with them, having never owned one, only rechrging those brought to me to access.

But there are so many variables and ultimately the plate paste composition is an unknown, and maximum profit always tops the list, and can make things change multiple times a year.

A manufacturer/marketer could decide to glue down the removable caps, and paste a maintenance free sticker over them and charge 10$ more and the average consumer would get a little serotonin blast at the thought, and gladly pay more for it

I've always approached EQ charges on Starting batteries more tentativley, suspiciously, and also 'feel' that some exercise on occassion is a good thing.

Take any lead acid battery that has remained at very high states of charge, quickly down to slightly less than 12.2v with ~ 10 to 15 amps of load. Low beams or high beam halogens, and then immediately recharge to full, truly full, no matter how long it takes, and they have better voltage retention afterwards, even after they have cooled back down.

And each new battery I have put a charger on, and watched the amperage acceptance at various voltages, performs differently, better, after a discharge then a full recharge. New batteries getting very slight discharges only, also perform better and retain higher full charge resting voltages once they are discharged further then recharged fully with 15+ amps per 100Ah of capacity.

100% charge is a great thing for lead acid batteries, but even if treated ideally, they will still die.

When I leave my TPPL AGM at the proper temperature compensated float voltage for days on end, then discharge it, the voltage retention is not as good as expected/hoped. But if I recharge fully, at a high initial rate, then subsequent discharges the voltage retention is back to impressive considering the size of th loads and how many amp hours are removed from the battery at that point.

I have an amp hour counter calibrated and rezeroed regularly, so I know with pretty good resolution, the state of charge of my battery(s) , and just how misleading voltage alone can be and when different charge discharge regimens produce results outside what is expected, from many hundreds of prior observations.
 
A quick, 2-4 hour EQ charge without monitoring SGs won’t hurt anything, but it may not be long enough to do any good either.
Back when I used to charge my battery every 3 months I would do an equalizing charge once a year, 15.5V for an hour.
That battery was working okay (apparently I'm not allowed to say "going strong") after 9 years.
Changed it because I just wasn't comfortable with a 10th winter.
Current battery has a solar panel that gets to ~13.5V each sunny day.
Don't think I'll do any equalizing because it's sealed.
 
You took some life out of it.

It won't go dead if you drive it but it regularly but it won't be fully charged either.

I put a maintainer/ charger on a 2 weeks no driving.

I suppose like 12 to 18 hours of that may have been a little long but I'm questioning why I may have hurt it? I sometimes see YouTube videos where they basically boil the battery something about keeping it working or something
 
I suppose like 12 to 18 hours of that may have been a little long but I'm questioning why I may have hurt it? I sometimes see YouTube videos where they basically boil the battery something about keeping it working or something

If the rate was under C3 (guessing it was - you have a 7 amp unit right? ) and you didnt expose the plates with off gassing hydrogen its not that bad.

Curious to see the vids you speak of.
 
If the rate was under C3 (guessing it was - you have a 7 amp unit right? ) and you didnt expose the plates with off gassing hydrogen its not that bad.

Curious to see the vids you speak of.

It doesn’t take much amperage to boil a fully charged battery. Pumping 7A into a fully charged battery would boil it dry relatively quickly and result in a very dangerous amount of H2 buildup.
 
I've been driving this car all day long on a very long road trip I'm headed to Colorado. So the battery has been accepting charge from the alternator all day long. The sun is setting now.

One of the reasons I put it on the SeaTac at all is so that it had a good "base charge* and I wasn't killing my alternator trying to charge a battery.

Does that even matter? When the car was running for basically all 12 to 24 hours in one shot at a time, turned off only for 15 minutes or so at a time to get gas?

Unless you were able to monitor voltage we cannot answer your question.

After having the Subie dealer perform a reflash IAW a TSB that addressed battery charging issues in Legacys, I routinely see 14.3VDC for prolonged periods of time. For my short 11 miles commute, it stays at 14.3VDC the entire time, even if freshly charged. My previous Civic would drop into the 12.6-12.8VDC range soon after getting on the highway. I hated that “money-saving, pollution reducing” feature.
 
Sorry to say but if I had a shop install a battery, I wouldn't mess with charging it with an auxiliary charger to the point of boiling the battery.

But that's just me.
 
Sorry to say but if I had a shop install a battery, I wouldn't mess with charging it with an auxiliary charger to the point of boiling the battery.

But that's just me.

No one is recommending that. A good top off, however, can do nothing but good.
 
My cars' charging systems don't have problems. And I put a dumb charger on the batteries every 2 months to keep them healthy and topped off. They charge at 5 amps and I keep them on for 20 minutes only. At 10 minutes, I hear some gassing already. I measure the voltage at the battery terminals and it is at 15.7 to 16.0 volts. I disconnect after 10 more minutes. Does anyone know if gassing while at 4-5 amperes is a sign they are already at 100%? As a corollary, if there's no gassing at 5 amperes charging rate, does this mean the battery is not at 100%?
 
My cars' charging systems don't have problems. And I put a dumb charger on the batteries every 2 months to keep them healthy and topped off. They charge at 5 amps and I keep them on for 20 minutes only. At 10 minutes, I hear some gassing already. I measure the voltage at the battery terminals and it is at 15.7 to 16.0 volts. I disconnect after 10 more minutes. Does anyone know if gassing while at 4-5 amperes is a sign they are already at 100%? As a corollary, if there's no gassing at 5 amperes charging rate, does this mean the battery is not at 100%?
Serious question:

What's your definition of a dumb charger? - simple transformer-based thing with a bunch of rectifiers supplying the leads?
How do you know for a fact its chasing 5 Amps into the battery at about 16V?
How do you know for a fact its only ever chasing 5Amp into the battery at any voltage?
 
Yes my charger is a simple transformer with a 4-diode full wave bridge rectifier. No other electronics involved.
I know it is 5 amps, it is what I read with my digital multimeter in series with the positive charger lead and the positive battery post at the 10 and 20 minute mark. I have measured 7 amperes charging current at the initial connection of the charger leads, and it goes down to 5 amps after 10 minutes.
The same instrument is used to measure voltage at the batt posts at the 10 and 20 minute mark.
 
My 66lb former group 31 US battery, which was a dual purpose marine flooded battery rated at 630CCA (IIRC) and 130 amp hours, after a regular' full charge, required 6.2 amps to be brought to 16.2v.

When those 6.2 amps tapered to around 4, it usually coincided with specific gravity rrising to 1.275 to 1.285 on all cells, indicating true full charge. the same cells always red slightly lower or higher, AND this exact number would vary depending on teh electrolyte level, Lower when full higher when just above the plates.

But after a while I just waited until amperage tapered to about 4 @16.2 and called it good rather than dipping the hydrometer. As the batttery aged eventually it would not taper to 4 but would instead start rising, and since my power supplies have 40 or more amps to seek/ maintain a voltage this could lead to thermal runaway, but I set my timer for 15 minutes to check things and terminate when required..

It was a weird battery, I got about 500 deep cycles from it before relegating it to shallow cycle duty.

if I had not observed then measured the bottom of one cell getting hot, I might have thought it was 'just fine', and perhaps even 'still going strong'

but evidence proved otherwise. I had watched its voltage rentention declining per AH removed for those 500 cycles and was getting irritated at the ever increasing time and effort it required to return it to a true full charge.

It lasted several years more shallow cycling on workshop floor with much les care and intervention, and still had not shorted a cell when I traded it as a core, and I could still get specific gravity to 1.275, on 5 of the cells anyway, the 6th was 1.250 max, the cell which liked to heat up when charging.

Gassing usually begins around 14.2v, but where it begins and how vigoruously depends on the battery and the rate it gets brought up to the low 14's. Now @ 16.2v, I called that Fizzing, and can smell it 10 meters away if downwind.

If one wears a strong headlight and good eye protection, one can see the different rates of bubbling at different voltage, and watch it occur at different states of charge and amperage and temperature.

gassing is good, it destratifies the electrolyte, mixing it up, helping it to migrate into the depths of the porous cells Long gassing events at high voltages after the battery is fully charged, are not.

Do not trust teh Ammeters on the transformer based chargers, I have a 2 and 10 amp schumacher that says 2 and 10 amps on its ammeter, but in reality is 0.56 amps max on teh 2 amp setting and 4.3 amps on the 10 amp setting.

The battery itself decides how much voltage will be pushed to with a given amperage. Again battery size, temperature, health and state of charge are all variables. So even on a specific battery, it will be different at cycle 5 or week one compared to cycle 150 or week 72.
 
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I’ve had one of those CTEK chargers a few years now, the bigger one whose model number I forget.. I have no idea what it’s doing inside, magic pixies perhaps . You just set the appropriate size and pick charge or recondition them let it do it’s thing. Except with a new battery I just leave it on Recondition for the older stuff. Checking with my carbon pile load tester it really does seem to bring them 🤞🏻 back At least partially most of the time Preferably when they’re not so far gone. I figure it buys me another season/ year +- And I did drag 2 more out of my riding mower battery .
Currently I’m using it on all my batteries a couple time a year on recondition . The battery in my 2000 Sierra has been sick for the last couple years. It got left sitting out and discharged one winter . It never cracked but was never able to pass the load test. I reconditioned it multiple time and got it to take a slightly passing charge. Even now it tests weak but I still recondition it 3-4 cycles a couple times a year and it keeps starting fine winter and summer.
My one gripe with the CTEK is its small and yet heavy. By that I mean if it gets dragged off the fender table whatever it may well get busted hitting a concrete floor. Soooooo conversely it’s light enough to get dragged over the side by the weight of the rather flimsy cables. You just need to watch where you put this guy. The wires are pretty minimal too. I store mine on a HF plastic $4 ammo can do it doesn’t get broken. It’s great for it’s purpose but slowwwww. I still have my 1981 Sears charger for when I need a fast charge.
 
I will check the battery water level on each cell, I did get some distilled water this time.

This occurred because I had the charger on RECOND.

Let me check the Resting Voltage ⚡ when I walk up to it, first thing in the morning. I shut the car off at about 11PM last night. Then start working on un-doing the battery tie-down, which is a slight process.

I know the plates have to be covered by electrolyte.. how far away from the caps is the question.

By the way, a little bit back in the thread here but, if an off the shelf battery sits without any further charging for at least four months.. how bad is that?
 
Resting Voltage walking up to it first thing in the morning is holding at 12.96V.
 
I know the plates have to be covered by electrolyte.. how far away from the caps is the question.
You don't want the liquid to touch the ring that extends down from the fill hole.
That ring helps to keep electrolyte from creeping out of the battery.
if an off the shelf battery sits without any further charging for at least four months.. how bad is that?
A fully charged & healthy battery can sit 6 months if kept cool (75F or less.)
Resting Voltage walking up to it first thing in the morning is holding at 12.96V.
I'd say that's full with a little remaining surface charge.

I'll leave you with a document on lead-acid battery care from 1922:

 
You don't want the liquid to touch the ring that extends down from the fill hole.
That ring helps to keep electrolyte from creeping out of the battery.

A fully charged & healthy battery can sit 6 months if kept cool (75F or less.)

I'd say that's full with a little remaining surface charge.

I'll leave you with a document on lead-acid battery care from 1922:


Great info. It sure sounds like I dodged a bullet!

May I just ask, what you mean by "surface charge?"
 
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