Generator battery low

[oldcodger]

Power outage today. Went out to put the Pulsar PG12000B generator in service and found the battery too low to crank, Generator is stored with a NOCO Genius1 maintainer connected. Maintainer was showing full charge green light. Cranked the unit with the pull cord and it ran for about 3 hours. Put my meter on the battery while it was running and got 13.8 volts so charging system on generator is working.
When I killed the generator I checked the battery and got 12.8 volts.
When I connected the NOCO to the battery and checked voltage at the battery I got 12.8 volts. When you disconnect the NOCO the unit shuts off and you will get 0.0 volts on the leads. The NOCO apparently reads the battery voltage and detects the full charge and does not put out any voltage. Is there a way to check if the maintainer is actually working? I guess I will have to put it on a battery with a low charge and see if it will actually charge.

 

[BigCahuna]

Let the battery sit overnight, then check it's voltage. If the battery is low, it will read less than 12.8vdc. Your meter doesn't put any load on the tender, so it won't be putting anything out. If you hook it up to the battery in the am, and the voltage changes, it's working. Here's a funny one. My friend kept his bike in a shed. So he had power to the shed connected to a switch. When he turned the switch on, it turned the light in the shed on, and also powered up the receptacle. Well he complained to me that his tender didn't seem to be working, when I took a look at it after opening the door, there were no lights lit. Then when I turned on the light in the shed, the tender came to life. Problem solved.,,

 

[Hirev]

I've found more than a few maintainers do the same thing. They shut off when full than don't start back up. Some of them will wait tell the battery gets below 12.5 volts to start back up. Some of them shut off with a power bump and need to be unpluged and plug back in. I have a big collection of maintainers for all my stuff more than a few need to be checked often. There doesn't seem to be much standardization with maintainers from what I've seen everyone doing their own thing.

 

[repairman54]

5 NOCO on my clubs equipment. I'm no fan of them but they preceded me, power failures they can be hit or miss on restarting properly and proprietary connectors. And needing to select battery sizes also. Not multiple user friendly. I'm a BatteryMInder guy, auto restart after utility supply issues and desulification, SAE connector, etc. Plus idiot proof multi user plug and play.
7 BM in play at home currently, some newer temp. compensated ones also. 13.4v maintenance level. 14 yr old Odyssey in my HD still cranking fine, maybe I should load test it though.

 

[Rand]

you need to load test the battery.
battery can show full but that doesn't have much to do with what it can output.
how old is the battery

Did you try starting the generator with the battery after it shutdown? .. next day would be even better.

also if it does start what is the voltage of the battery during starting..-- nice to know, but usually its apparent if the battery is on its way out.

 

[oldcodger]

Think I will give the BatteryMinder a try. Thanks for the help guys.