Lifeline GPL-4DA Marine Battery Questions/Help

[Randyonr3]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

"Ok, at 2hrs that disconnected battery was at 12.8v it was 12.99 2hrs ago. "

I'll go out on a limb here and say absolutely NO "twelve" volt battery ever holds a real 12.99 or 12.8 volt charge.

Anytime you see a charge over 12.6-12.7 volts, it is either meter error (which may be 2% plus or minus 3 LSD, worse for some grossly uncalibrated cheapies and old meters that have drifted) or a FLOAT CHARGE which tells you nothing about true battery charge state and capacity.

Onefast, really, you want to spend a couple of hours reading up on this stuff, or just bring in some professional help.

Lifeline states their 4d to be fully charged at 12.8 and 50% at 12.2 and as I said, ours being lifeline 4 d to be over 12 years old and still working great.
We are looking to replace befor we head south again......

[onefastdaddy]

Originally Posted by Randyonr3

Lifeline states their 4d to be fully charged at 12.8 and 50% at 12.2 and as I said, ours being lifeline 4 d to be over 12 years old and still working great.

We are looking to replace befor we head south again......

Good news, I spoke to, and worked with the very helpful reps from lifeline and we determined the batteries are actually ok.

We had gone to shore power for 3 days and with charging the batteries came back. Then the reps explained what the batteries should perform like. We did some load tests. One I did with a fellow boater Jim here who brought over his load tester. That showed good batteries. My test was to turn on approx 8A of load and watch the voltage. I did not realize that an initial drop is normal as the voltage goes down to provide the Amps needed by the load. It steadies (varies with the load where), and holds there. In my case 12.6...for a couple of hours. Then the drop starts again slow at first. At 12.2 (under load) I am getting low and time to recharge.

With the explanation about voltage with and without load I can now much better understand the batteries and better care for them. I wish I had two more now but I can live with these two now.

FWIW I have ordered LED replacements for the Halogen lights.


Sent from my iPad using Cruisers Sailing Forum