Thursday, August 20, 2009

Under Load

I MapQuested a trip around town, using 35-50MPH roads with hills and drive 16.5 miles just to make sure I could make the trip to school. I found out that I have two really bad batteries. After 15 miles of driving, the PakTrakr starting to flip out saying that A1 nd B1 needed charging.

So I set the PakTrakr to monitor the batteries in question and found that under load, A1 was sagging to 10.4 volts and B1 was at 7.5 volts! The other batteries were only sagging to 11.2-11.1 volts while driving at 35 MPH. I made it home, but dropped the speed down to 25 MPH to keep the A1 and B1 batteries above 10.5 volts.

I am pulling A1 and B1 today and getting them replaced at Walmart. 18 month free replacement is going to be real useful right now. I kept all my reciepts just for this purpose.

At least I know I can make it the 16.3 miles, and most of the batteries were at 50% when I stopped. And the route I plan to take to school is limited to about 35 MPH and probably less hilly.

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