Tips and Tricks | Keeping Your Vehicle's Battery Alive

There is one component that can terminate your car’s performance - the battery. One could say your battery is the heart of your vehicle, and because of that fact, your battery, like your heart, requires maintenance, good care and the proper charger in order to support your vehicle’s life cycle. Without a functioning battery, your car or motorcycle will not start without a great deal of assistance and odds are other electronic components will not operate correctly either. There are four stages involved in charging your vehicle’s wet battery.

1. Bulk Stage: This requires the charger current be constant, resulting in voltage increases in your battery during the first 80 percent of the recharge.
2. Absorption Stage: Here the current decreases during the final 20 percent of the charging effort until the battery is fully charged.
3. Float Stage: This is a maintenance stage and a much lower charge voltage is held constant. This overcomes the battery’s normal self-discharge and retains a fully charged battery in your vehicle.
4. Equalizing Stage (optional): This process actually reverses the accumulation of chemical effects in your battery and balances each of the battery cells’ voltage and specific gravity. Electrolyte stratification, which usually occurs in the bottom of the battery where the concentration of acid is greatest, is reversed and sulfate crystals are removed from the surface, or within, the pours of the battery plates.

If you detect a bad egg odor coming from your battery or note the base of the filler caps have black deposits on them, you have probably overcharged your battery. Other indicators of overcharging your battery include electrolytes that are brown or muddy red in color, or there may even be brown sediment that is lumpy in texture.Undoubtedly you want the best care available to ensure the health of your own heart. While your vehicle doesn’t hold the same life-saving importance as the human heart, a dead battery can interfere with a life-saving emergency. Your car battery charger or motorcycle battery tender should be considered a long-term investment. A bad charger used on a good battery is far from ideal, while a good charger used on a less-expensive battery is a much "healthier" decision.