Quote:
Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz
Ally,
There are a few answers here. The batteries that are from previous years, 2007 or earlier have likely reached their maximum life. If they cannot hold a charge, it is time to recycle them. Our batteries have a useful life span of a maximum of 400 charge/discharge cycles. If they are run hard (drained in one match) you can expect that to be much less. If you have used them for a significant number of demos and off-season play then it is likely that even this year's batteries could be at the end of their life. A battery load tester can tell you for sure. A voltmeter cannot tell you anything about the battery without a load. The one I recommend is the CBA-II from West Mountain Radio. It is expensive but worth every penny. it even allows you to test the battery and overlay it with last year's test of the same battery to track age differences. We have been using mine since 2004.
For those that might be wondering, yes batteries can fail right out of the box. Dropping, holding by the wires and poor storage can kill batteries. Over charging, higher than 6 amps, will also kill a battery no matter how much you think you are monitoring it. With AGM batteries, the higher voltage encountered with high current chargers, can punch through the glass mats and cause hot spots inside the battery.
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I believe we have tried using a batter load tester. I'm not totally sure, but I think so. As Ally said, we are unable to get into the workshop until January to test the batteries any further.
Thanks everyone for all these ideas! We've been kinda lost about what is wrong and where to go from there, but these should really help us out