part of my job at the faa is diposing of toxic waste,mostly batteries,i see probably 100 a week,mostly with bulged cracked leaking cases.heres what happens to a battery when you charge it too quickly.when you charge a battery it creates heat,just like any other thing thats drawing amperage.except a battery is sealed or in the case of an old style battery very slightly vented.so you have to charge it slowly or it will get too hot,and begin to -a,boil in a wet cell battery or b,in the case of one the newer gel type batteries expand.when either of these things happen the plates inside of battery begin to slough off the coating made caused by the reaction between plates and acid.if it continues to get hot the plates themselves start to warp.just like a sheet of any metal will if you heat it.if they heat enough to warp enough the plates in them will touch each other and short out and sometimes explode right then.another thing that happens is that the crap that was sloghed off plates is held in suspension because when you take battery off charger it continues to boil.when this happens as it slowly cools down it begins to settle in bottom of battery case if theres enough to fill say the bttom 1/4 or so of plastic case,or whatever space is designed into battery for this purpose ,it will short across plates and it can explode later.try this the next time you need to charge a totally discharged battery,set charger on say 10 amps on this setting most battery chargers are regulated.watch the amp meter,if battery is truly way down ,when you turn it on it will start charging at say 2-3 amps and as battery heats/charges up it will climb to 10 amps.as battery becomes fully charged amp guage will again drop until charger hits its holding/maintaining charge of around 2 amps usually.BUT on a fifty amp charger,one that is unregulated ,you will bypass the regulator circuit.hit that battery with a full fifty amps all at once causing it to heat very quickly and continue to build heat the full time your charging.heat is what kills your battery,not the charging itself.this is why they have voltage regulators on our vehicles to protect the battery.the older the battery the slower you have to charge it,because the oxides/sulfates that build up on plates also make them retain heat longer.causing them to be more suceptable to damage.a brand new battery might handle 50 amps for ten minutes but im sure it will do it no good.most batteries have a charging rate written on the battery or it will be in the specs somewhere.hope this helps!
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Today's Featured Article - Third Brush Generators - by Chris Pratt. While I love straightening sheet metal, cleaning, and painting old tractors, I use every excuse to avoid working on the on the electrics. I find the whole process sheer mystery. I have picked up and attempted to read every auto and farm electrics book with no improvement in the situation. They all seem to start with a chapter entitled "Theory of Electricity". After a few paragraphs I usually close the book and go back to banging out dents. A good friend and I were recently discussing our tractor electrical systems when he stated "I figure it all comes back to applying Ohms Law". At this point
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