---------------------------------------------------------- RV-List Digest Archive --- Total Messages Posted Thu 06/06/13: 4 ---------------------------------------------------------- Today's Message Index: ---------------------- 1. 08:24 PM - pc680 life time (thomas sargent) 2. 08:34 PM - Re: pc680 life time (Jeff Orear) 3. 09:21 PM - Re: pc680 life time (vanremog@aol.com) 4. 10:09 PM - Re: pc680 life time (Ed Holyoke) ________________________________ Message 1 _____________________________________ Time: 08:24:22 PM PST US Subject: RV-List: pc680 life time From: thomas sargent It's time to do the annual on my 6A (IO-360). The PC680 Odyssey battery is 3 years old. Seems to work fine (only about 110 hours on it). Should I replace this now on general principles, or can it go another year? It's been heavily discharged once by a very small load over about 10 days, so nothing real violent has ever happened to it. -- Tom Sargent ________________________________ Message 2 _____________________________________ Time: 08:34:20 PM PST US Subject: Re: RV-List: pc680 life time From: Jeff Orear Fly on, Tom. I got 5 years out of my first odyssey. Jeff Orear RV6A N782P Peshtigo, WI On Jun 6, 2013, at 10:23 PM, thomas sargent wrote: > It's time to do the annual on my 6A (IO-360). The PC680 Odyssey battery i s 3 years old. Seems to work fine (only about 110 hours on it). Should I re place this now on general principles, or can it go another year? > > It's been heavily discharged once by a very small load over about 10 days, so nothing real violent has ever happened to it. > > -- > Tom Sargent > > ========================== ========= ========================== ========= ========================== ========= ========================== ========= > ________________________________ Message 3 _____________________________________ Time: 09:21:52 PM PST US Subject: Re: RV-List: pc680 life time From: vanremog@aol.com The Resnikoff Conundrum points out that long term testing of an item that m ay lead to dire consequences upon its failure may be ill advised. Dependin g on what your battery runs, you may want to run the bath tub curve experim ent, or not. Only you can decide whether you can survive the consequences. In my plane always hangared in CA, trickle-charge maintained during the win ter and with magneto ignition, I would replace that battery after 48 mos. YMMV. -GV -----Original Message----- From: thomas sargent Sent: Thu, Jun 6, 2013 8:25 pm Subject: RV-List: pc680 life time It's time to do the annual on my 6A (IO-360). The PC680 Odyssey battery is 3 years old. Seems to work fine (only about 110 hours on it). Should I re place this now on general principles, or can it go another year? It's been heavily discharged once by a very small load over about 10 days, so nothing real violent has ever happened to it. -- Tom Sargent ________________________________ Message 4 _____________________________________ Time: 10:09:35 PM PST US From: Ed Holyoke Subject: Re: RV-List: pc680 life time The best way to know if your battery has outlived its usefulness is to test it at every annual. You can use something like this: http://www.westmountainradio.com/product_info.php?products_id=cba4 and a laptop to discharge the battery and plot an accurate ampere hour curve. Use a discharge rate appropriate to what you would draw with the alternator inop and minimal loads and stop the test at 10.5 volts. Then you put it back on the charger and you know what it's worth. If you don't have enough usable electrons to run out your fuel, that would be good to know in advance. If you don't have enough capacity to run for at least an hour or two..... maybe it's time for a new battery. An electrically dependent engine would indicate even more caution as concerns battery capacity. A test like this won't tell you much about cranking capacity, but you should already know if it's getting weak at high discharge rates by how it's turning your engine over. One deep discharge cycle may or may not do much damage. A lot depends on how deep and how long it remained discharged before getting it charged back up. Testing it overnight to 10.5v and putting back on the charger in the morning shouldn't harm it. If you test your battery yearly, you'll have a baseline and you can see how quickly it is going down hill and make an intelligent decision on when to chuck it. Incidentally, we once had a dead short ahead of the battery contactor, discharging it to 5v by the time I got there. Charged it up and it started just fine. At a 4 amp rate, it tested to more than 90% of it's rated capacity. We replaced it a couple of months later when it didn't want to crank the airplane, but it is still a useful bench battery. Ed Holyoke On 6/6/2013 9:14 PM, vanremog@aol.com wrote: > The Resnikoff Conundrum points out that long term testing of an item > that may lead to dire consequences upon its failure may be ill > advised. Depending on what your battery runs, you may want to run the > bath tub curve experiment, or not. Only you can decide whether you > can survive the consequences. > In my plane always hangared in CA, trickle-charge maintained during > the winter and with magneto ignition, I would replace that battery > after 48 mos. YMMV. > -GV > -----Original Message----- > From: thomas sargent > To: rv-list > Sent: Thu, Jun 6, 2013 8:25 pm > Subject: RV-List: pc680 life time > > It's time to do the annual on my 6A (IO-360). The PC680 Odyssey > battery is 3 years old. Seems to work fine (only about 110 hours on > it). Should I replace this now on general principles, or can it go > another year? > > It's been heavily discharged once by a very small load over about 10 > days, so nothing real violent has ever happened to it. > > -- > Tom Sargent > * > > t="_blank">http://www.matronics.com/Navigator?RV-List > tp://forums.matronics.com > _blank">http://www.matronics.com/contribution > > * > * > > > * ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Other Matronics Email List Services ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post A New Message rv-list@matronics.com UN/SUBSCRIBE http://www.matronics.com/subscription List FAQ http://www.matronics.com/FAQ/RV-List.htm Web Forum Interface To Lists http://forums.matronics.com Matronics List Wiki http://wiki.matronics.com Full Archive Search Engine http://www.matronics.com/search 7-Day List Browse http://www.matronics.com/browse/rv-list Browse Digests http://www.matronics.com/digest/rv-list Browse Other Lists http://www.matronics.com/browse Live Online Chat! http://www.matronics.com/chat Archive Downloading http://www.matronics.com/archives Photo Share http://www.matronics.com/photoshare Other Email Lists http://www.matronics.com/emaillists Contributions http://www.matronics.com/contribution ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These Email List Services are sponsored solely by Matronics and through the generous Contributions of its members.