Battery/Alternator Tester

[waltermitty]

I saved so much money after receiving my HF credit card and have gotten to the point where even their biggest sales find me thinking "meh, I don't need anything". I take that back. i go in for the free bucket.

I have the 2x IR units and also the battery tester

 

[joecon]

One big difference between a load tester and an electronic battery tester is that in order to use the load tester you first must charge the battery. Then you have to recharge the battery when you are done. In a situation where someone is waiting, or they are paying for your time you cannot wait for hours for the battery to charge. A load test is only accurate if the battery is fully charged, with an electronic tester, you do not discharge the battery and you can teat one that is not fully charge. The battery companies require that you use electronic testers because they have determined that most people cannot test a battery correctly.

 

[engineer2]

Bear Automotive designed computerized load testers (nichrome ribbon instead of a carbon pile) that would work on mostly discharged batteries, but they went out of business 25 years ago.

 

[Wrench97]

Bear Automotive designed computerized load testers (nichrome ribbon instead of a carbon pile) that would work on mostly discharged batteries, but they went out of business 25 years ago

Bear is still around, though lost a lot of ground in the USA > https://www.bear-cartek.com/about

 

[tak1313]

For those using 100 amp carbon testers, do you find them to be a reliable indicator? I remember some debate - don't remember if it was this forum or not - that when using a carbon tester, one should use a 500 amp tester as the 100 amp testers do not load the battery sufficiently to really give the right indication. This is supposedly especially true with modern cars that put more stagnant loads on the battery than older tech cars.

 

[engineer2]

Bear is still around, though lost a lot of ground in the USA > https://www.bear-cartek.com/about

I had forgotten about them. Must be leftover from the SPX driven Bear and Allen Test Products merger.

 

[Wrench97]

For those using 100 amp carbon testers, do you find them to be a reliable indicator? I remember some debate - don't remember if it was this forum or not - that when using a carbon tester, one should use a 500 amp tester as the 100 amp testers do not load the battery sufficiently to really give the right indication. This is supposedly especially true with modern cars that put more stagnant loads on the battery than older tech cars.

The key is to test at half the rated CCA so a 640CCA battery you would test at 320 amp on the carbon pile.
The small hand held units with the toggle switch are not carbon pile testers.
The down side is you need to have a fully charged battery and will probably need to recharge after testing, it is time consuming which costs money in labor and lost bay revenue.
The digital conductance battery testers will also do temperature compensation a nice feature since a cold battery(32f and below) will not have the same amp output as a 80f battery.
If you just doing your own a digital volt meter and the starter will tell you 98% of the time especially if the car has clear flood mode.

 

[Wrench97]

I had forgotten about them. Must be leftover from the SPX driven Bear and Allen Test Products merger.

Yea like normal any more these mergers get strange with Cartek picking up only non USA rights until about 2018 or so.

 

[johninct]

For those using 100 amp carbon testers, do you find them to be a reliable indicator? I remember some debate - don't remember if it was this forum or not - that when using a carbon tester, one should use a 500 amp tester as the 100 amp testers do not load the battery sufficiently to really give the right indication. This is supposedly especially true with modern cars that put more stagnant loads on the battery than older tech cars.

On mine, there is a scale to read I am guessing makes up for the difference in load and takes that into account.

 

[ajchien]

Given the analog design, like a needle volt meter etc, you simply tweak the screw below the display to 'zero' the deflection. I used my Fluke meter to benchmark the voltage and adjusted the HF load tester accordingly. Takes seconds

I pulled that old 100Amp HF load tester out of storage to revisit this.

So when the tester is not hooked up, it is centered at 0V. When I attached it to an unloaded test battery, it reads 12.7V - exactly the same as a multimeter on the terminals. Everything seems to be as it should be.

However, when I apply the load, the analog gauge on the load tester drops to 9V, while a multimeter (multiple different ones) on the battery terminals reads 9.9V, which is a 0.9V difference.

So there is a 0.9V drop between the load tester’s cables and its analog meter under load. idk, maybe when I get out to the garage again, I’ll put a dc amp Clamp on the cables to see how much amperage the load tester is really drawing. Having discrepant numbers makes me question the reliability of my equipment.