Colorado B.S. Thread

No, still have the sleds. Got an r1 a couple weeks ago

 

You guys are reading that battery wrong.
I have the same one, thats a MAXIMUM charge voltage it can take.
Much over that will fry it.
That guy with the alternator mod is not doing anybody any favors.

 

You want a high amp output unit for quick recharging as well as running the plethora of light bars and bass speakers that most have. Its amps to fill a battery, not volts.

 

In the case of @mountainmonkey ’s battery your right,
but @Coop68 ’s Odysseies it’s says on it that it wants higher.
Optima states they want 13.65-15v from the alt

 

I have Odyssey batteries. They are typical for AGM, bulk & absorption at 14.7 V, current limit at 40% of battery rating (which means 22 amps each for my 55 A-hr batteries). It should drop to 13.6 V for float.



What @Star-Lord is saying is right. That diode voltage bump trick raises your alternator voltage and that's fine and may be necessary to meet some requirements but it will likely float them too high. This will ruin a battery faster than chronic under charging, which reduces capacity over time.

The reason charging systems run they way they do is you're essentially putting the battery in float most of the time. You want the voltage to be ~13.6 and not greater than 14 for that. It's much safer to buy a good charger and run it on your AGM once a month to get the high voltage you need to fully charge it than to do the diode trick.

The voltage regulator should be doing this management for you. Move the voltage sense to the battery and read the voltages at the battery. That's what is key, the voltage at the battery, not at a cigarette plug or whatever. My factory charging system is a little low for an AGM but it's definitely not 0.7V low.

 

I just put an AGM in my truck after reading a few posts (via Google) that most modern alternators can handle AGMs. The common theme was to not over voltage the AGM or it will damage the battery.

What's the service cycle on Tacoma alternators?

 

The booster mod only gain .5v once everything warms it usually hovers around 13.8 now. I’ll have to get more readings later.

It’s not changing the way the factory charges just increasing it by the .5

 

Is anybody going to the motocross race this weekend? Planning on taking the wife and kiddo.

 

It will raise the alternator output voltage by whatever is the voltage drop of the diode junction. It may be anywhere from 0.3 to 0.7 volts typically, depending on the type you use and part-to-part variance.

Realize you are changing the stock system, it's forcing the alternator output to be higher by that diode value but it's not technically part of the control loop for the regulator, which still thinks it's running at the battery sensed voltage. It's likely that either bulk or float will be wrong with the diode.

But that I mean normally the problem is bulk charge voltage is low, e.g. the 14.7 V, not the float. With the diode you add say 0.5 V (assuming it's probably a cheap Schottky) to the 14.3 V to get it to 14.8 V, it's likely that the voltage regulator will want to float at 13.5 V an you're going to force it to 14.0 V. Ideally you should switch in the diode during bulk and once the current has leveled on the floor indicating absorption is complete you drop back to a safe float. I would consider using a voltage sensing relay to switch the diode in and out, for example.

I'm just warning you do make sure you measure at the battery and tenths of a volt matter here. Our factory alternators don't vary that much (not a whole volt) when they're working correctly.

There's also a temperature variable here. The correct voltage for charging is usually based on 25C/77F. Normally you roughly compensate by about +/- 13 mV per degree F. So if the actual temperature of the battery is 100F and the correct voltage is 14.7 V then you should be using 14.4 V and 13.3 V as your charge voltages. This is stuff that the original engineers figured in when they designed the voltage regulation. The alternator output will also vary with temperature, it's not a hard-fast fixed output device, not to mention the diode forward voltage drop is also positive temperature dependent.

 

Oil field guys... The place that sells the ibc 275 gallon non food containers were previously filled with fracking chemicals.

Is there any way to clean that stuff out to make it good enough for storing water for plants? I'm leaning towards no but figured I'd check.

 

If it’s the same stuff our bore guys use it’s a slippery mess and proably not safe.

 

what chems?

 

Not sure, all the repurposed materials place said is they know they are mostly from fracking. But they don't know exactly what was in each.

They said they had 175 of them.

It's only $25 more for the food grade ones. Only catch is they don't have any and not sure when they'll get more. But I'll probably just wait for those.

 

Is this what you are looking for? Not mine.

https://denver.craigslist.org/grq/d/used-275-gallon-ibc-totes/6592398751.html

 

The totes are missing labels or have been painted over. If it's surfactant you can wash that out, it's basically soap. I can talk a walk and get closer than driving by on my way out of the complex.

 

I wouldn’t waste the effort for $25, if it was me and I did it, all plants would be dead and then find out I have to pay some big hazardous disposal fee to rid myself of it.

 

Ummmm yeah..

 

Yup, that's the same company but they currently only have the non food grade ones i was asking about.

Yeah this place is down in Henderson i think so it's way too far for driving down just to check.

Yeah, they don't have any but i had them put me on the list to let me know when they have the food grade ones again. I guess it's one less project i have to do right now... But it sure would make the chances of the aspens surviving a bit better.

 

They advertise a lot of shit, I gave up trying to work with them

 

Yay, get to send more documents into Toyota for driveshaft u joint warranty enhancement..... apparently me determining my u joints are shot and having a shop rebuild the driveshaft isn’t enough.....

Going to go “nuclear” and quote the Magnuson moss warranty act and doing you own repairs outside of the oem facilities