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Replaced battery, losing faith in microprocessors

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OperaHouse:
I bought a battery for my car 6 months ago.  It was four years old and winter was coming. I could use the old one for the boat. Lately when I turn off the key the dash display says it is going into the battery save mode. Also gone out a couple of times and it was just dead stranding me.  My meter would read almost 14.8V when running and immediately drop to 12.2V when shut off.  If not left for too many days it would start fine. I put another old battery in and it was fine for a week.

Finally got around to taking it back for warranty.  They had this hi tech wifi enabled tester with a fancy screen. Battery measured 11.97V, cranking was over 700A and it said good battery. Told me they would exchange the battery, but I could never come back with another problem.

Everything works fine now with no dash warnings or battery voltage dropping. So much for that microprocessor program. People just believe anything that appears on a screen.

DamonHD:
I can build you microcontroller stuff with any amount of really smart stuff mixed in with a selection of really dumb bugs, even though I'm very very careful.  I don't think that the microprocessor is responsible for the faults of the human that programmed it.

Rgds

Damon

Bruce S:
I agree with DamonHD on this, there's a whole slew of poorly programmed testers out there.

However , any place I go that slaps a new fangled tester on my battery and tells me that I can't ever come back gets a where's your manager question.
Plus I have a load tester that I'll throw in front of them if they get smart mouthed about it (only had one guy "young: dude do that at an O'Reilys).
 
Glad you got your battery and knew better than the sale person!

dnix71:
I had a marginal battery I wanted to replace and was willing to pay cash for, but the clerk refused to sell me one at first because the hand-held tester said the battery was "good." I told him I was not asking for any prorate or warranty because I bought the battery elsewhere, but he said the company would discipline him for selling a new battery when the old one tested usable.

I told him the the battery had already failed once and stranded me and that the company would get a legal complaint from me if they sent me away and I got stranded again. I have driven cars making deliveries and daily to earn a living for over 40 years. I repair my own vehicles and have tools to test. The person testing agreed to a second test and this time the battery 'failed.'

There is no way a cheap clipon tester could accurately determine a 700 amp draw. That is outright fraud.

If your battery is reading 14.8v accurately under no load, then your alternator regulator is way our of wack and is destroying the battery internally. That's your fault, not the battery maker.

OperaHouse:
I forgot to mention with the new battery it went down to 14.4V. Anyway, everything is normal now.  I was just playing with a PWM regulator charging my battery for camp I brought home. I had used it for testing with a couple of broken MPPT controllers.   It was measuring 14.98V.  I checked it with a scope. The duty cycle is 600ms.  At that battery maintain, the on pulse is only 25ms.  Just surface charge that goes away.

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