12-04-2019, 11:20 PM
The Northstar NSB-27M has been relegated to workshop duty after nearly failing to start my warm engine yesterday when fully charged in mild ambient temperatures.
Sometimes recently, I was paralleling the MM battery to it, just so the stereo would not shut off when starting the engine, but not always. Other times I just had the Ideal diode passing charging voltages to it whenever they were present to keep it topped off.
Today, it was in parallel with the NSB-27M for a few starts on the way to the battery distributor and kept at 14.7v there and back.
While I was charging up the New NSB-31M battery, I plugged in the better of 2 wattmeters to top charge the MM, and found amps tapered down to 0.09 at 14.4v. I then removed the New Northstar and cranked voltage upto 15 and it tapered quickly back to 0.08. Often this battery decided to taper to no lower than 0.15 @14.7v before rising again.
I should see if it alone can still start my engine as all I do is plug in two 45a powerpoles and flip a switch from 2 back to 1. Such low voltage is likely difficult on the starter but the New NSB-31M is going to be maintaining 12+ volts during starting, for several years yet.
I think the next time I have to use the 24v hedge clippers, I will shop for another AGM battery in the 22AH range and put them in series in the backpack.
Sometimes recently, I was paralleling the MM battery to it, just so the stereo would not shut off when starting the engine, but not always. Other times I just had the Ideal diode passing charging voltages to it whenever they were present to keep it topped off.
Today, it was in parallel with the NSB-27M for a few starts on the way to the battery distributor and kept at 14.7v there and back.
While I was charging up the New NSB-31M battery, I plugged in the better of 2 wattmeters to top charge the MM, and found amps tapered down to 0.09 at 14.4v. I then removed the New Northstar and cranked voltage upto 15 and it tapered quickly back to 0.08. Often this battery decided to taper to no lower than 0.15 @14.7v before rising again.
I should see if it alone can still start my engine as all I do is plug in two 45a powerpoles and flip a switch from 2 back to 1. Such low voltage is likely difficult on the starter but the New NSB-31M is going to be maintaining 12+ volts during starting, for several years yet.
I think the next time I have to use the 24v hedge clippers, I will shop for another AGM battery in the 22AH range and put them in series in the backpack.