Original C5 charger on a Sealed battery

[kamilb1998]

Hi all,

I am currently using the original charger for my Standard (14.7V) Yuasa battery. Obviously the original C5 charger was made for these, but will it be safe charging my second battery which is Seales (14.4V) or do I risk it overcharging it?

[rafarestaura]

Hi Kamilb, I´ll try to help you. In theory, every kind of battery have his own kind of charger. If I remember well, the original charger of Sinclair is rated for leaded acid batteries about 33 amps of capacity and offer about 2.5 amps/hour. Some chargers cut when they reach 14.5 volts and some near 15 volts. But with some careful procedures, you can use that charger with a lot of kinds of batteries, sealed or not, AGM or acid leaded. The basic idea you must remember is the power of the charger must be around 10% of battery capacity. More power can blow up the acid into the battery and became it unuseful. An example; as I use several kinds of electric vehicles, my electric tandem, my C5, and use differents voltages, tandem use 36 volts and the C5 use 12 volts, I have several AGM batteries rated at 12 volts and 12 amps and make combinations to get the desired result. I drive my C5 using two packs of three elements, getting 12 volts and 72 amps, with 25 pounds of weight the whole and charge them using a standard charger of leaded batteries, rated at 12 volts and 6 amps/hour. Before two years of use, the batteries are still in perfect condition  . The only limitation to use standard chargers are the LIPO batteries. I´ve seen a lot of this packs blow away in the moment of charging, even using a special charger with termal control. But if you use acid or AGM don´t be worry, only don´t use a very big charger and that´s all, for me at least.

I hope this comment can be useful for you.

Regards, Rafael

[kamilb1998]

Thanks Rafael, I was just worried about using the C5 charger incase it overcharged the Sealed battery which I believe are rated at .4V lower than Standard ones.

I wouldn't normally pay attention to this but my Halfords Advanced charger has two modes - one for sealed and one for standard - and I thought that the C5 charger could cause damage to the new, sealed battery.

[rafarestaura]

Hi Kamilb, I´ve seen the manual of the Halfords Advanced Charger and it´s a heavy duty charger, it reaches 9 amps/hour, that´s the reason it have a sealed battery mode button, if you use an amperimeter you´ll see the rate of charge will be lower in this mode to avoid acid burns. That´s not the problem of the C5 original charger, it´s slow but sure your battery don´t suffer damage, poor but honest  .

Regards, Rafael

[kamilb1998]

That's cleared things up now for me, Rafael. Many Thanks.