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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Q. Why does the LCD screen indicate a fully charged battery straight away?
A. There are two possible reasons why the LCD display may indicate a fully charged
battery (‘OK’) straight away.
1. The battery is fully charged.
2. The battery has taken a surface charge.
Q. What is Surface Charge?
A. Batteries unused or left flat for some time build up a resistance to being
recharged. When the charger is first connected, these batteries will take a
surface charge, and the LCD display will indicate a fully charged battery within
a short while. The battery however is not fully charged, the charger is voltage
sensitive and cannot differentiate between a surface charge and a fully charged
battery. After a few hours the battery may start to accept some charge but most
batteries with this condition will not recover.
Q. What is a Faulty Cell?
A. 12 Volt batteries contain 6 cells and one faulty cell is enough to ruin your
battery. If after eight hours of charging your battery is still flat, you should test
the cells using a hydrometer. If one reading is lower than the rest it indicates a
faulty cell. It is pointless to continue charging, as the battery needs replacing.
Q. What are Volts and Amps?
VOLTS
The term voltage refers to the electrical force or electric potential to do work
between two terminals or a good analogy is water pressure in a pipe. For
example a battery has 12 Volts between the positive and negative terminals.
AMPS
The term AMPS is the unit of measure used for current. This can be described
as the flow of electric charge in a circuit. Again if you use the water analogy
this would refer to how much water is flowing through the pipe. For example
if the current is reading 12 Amps then this is the amount of energy going into
the battery.
