How important is it to "top off" my vehicle's starting battery (or deep cycle)?

[nycgags]

How important is it to "top off" my vehicle's starting battery (or deep cycle)?

My starting battery for my 2016 Jeep Wrangler is an "Odyssey Batteries 34R-PC1500T-A Automotive/Light Truck and Van Battery"

On the Wrangler Forum, someone pointed out that an issue with battery is that it is difficult to fully charge and that an external charger such as a "CTEK (56-674) Multi US 25000 8-step, Fully Automatic 12 Volt 25 Amp Battery Charger"

is needed to maintain these batteries. It was mentioned that the battery should be fully charged at least once a year.

Any comments, critique on this? Do I need to purchase a $240 charger to get maximum life out of my $250 starting battery? How much life am I losing by not properly maintaining my Odyssey?

FWIW here is my current levels for my batteries (Odyssey is on the left):

 

[dwh]

Been a couple of reports around here of Odysseys used for cranking and after a couple years not holding their specified full charge voltage anymore.

Apparently, the factory recommended procedure to fix it is to drain the battery and then recharge with a charger that can do the right sort of charge.

The right sort of charge for an Odyssey being a current of C*.4 or 40 amps for a 100 amp*hour battery AND push it at that rate until it reaches IIRC 14.8v and then hold it at 14.8v for a certain amount of time.

Of course, Odyssey sells a charger that can do the right sort of charge. And of course, probably no vehicle charging system will come close to doing what that battery wants/needs to stay healthy.

Since lead-acid batteries don't develop a memory like NiCads, the only reason I can think of for this to be the way it is, is that the electrolyte is stratifying due to the battery not getting properly pumped up during charging. Stratification is a common problem with flooded batteries, and you fix it by doing an "EQ" cycle. Since you can't EQ a sealed battery, I'm guessing the drain and heavy duty recharge is how they get the electrolyte stirred back up.

But I freely admit that that is just a guess. I haven't asked Odyssey about it since I don't have any if their batteries.

As to the long term effect...

Every minute that a lead-acid battery is at less than 100% charged, sulfation happens at an increased rate. The more deeply the battery is discharged, the faster it happens. A few years of never quite getting to 100% will certainly shorten the battery's life. How much shorter? Dunno...haven't seen any data yet on how that affects TPPL (thin plate, pure lead) batteries like the Odyssey.

 

[Ducky's Dad]

I have had a bunch of Odysseys over the last ten or so years, and the Grp 34s have been generally trouble free, with no additional charging required. All the charging/maintenance issues I have had have been with the Odyssey Grp 31s.

FWIW here is my current levels for my batteries (Odyssey is on the left):

I'm just guessing that the pic was taken with the engine running, because Odysseys are fully charged at 12.85 resting OCV. I have never seen an Odyssey at 13.7 OCV, but I know from experience that the Nat Luna battery monitors are not very accurate (have two of them in my truck). It's good to have a Ctek 25000 for those times you need it, especially if the Jeep is not a daily driver, but if it is a DD you should be fine with the stock alternator.

 

[Chris Boyd]

I'd echo the experience here that in fact using a optima yellow top as a starting battery does in fact degrade it over the period of about 2 years. I can't get my primary to stay in the green of my Luna controller unless I've drained it and charged it from a shore-based charger. I routinely shore-charge my aux house side and it seems that the battery stays healthy longer. So now I just swap the two every 6months or so.

I'm in the process of replacing the shore charger to one that has two leads and can charge both batteries independently, so if I leave the vehicle for longer periods, everything gets maintained. I had been just leaving a solar controller in place to do, but even that doesn't seem to give the optima's the boost they really need.

I was hoping (and had heard) that the odysseys would be better than the optimas, but it doesn't seem from this thread to be that much a difference. For now at least, autozone warrantees the optimas if I demonstrate that it's not holding a higher charge. they replace it for free. 3 times now on two different batteries. When that policy changes I guess I'll update to the odyssey.

 

[Chris Boyd]

I might also add that it sucks Luna didn't include 12.8 in the display... Though I guess they figure >12.6 is 100%.

 

[4x4junkie]

Do I need to purchase a $240 charger to get maximum life out of my $250 starting battery?

No. (well, you can if you want to...)

Years ago I had bought a 20 amp Astron regulated DC power supply (RS-20A) for $10 at a garage sale, so I installed a variable voltage control and a $8 digital meter on it and have been using that to top off various batteries once every 4-6 months or so (Astron also has DC supplies with a meter & adjustments already on them). Set the voltage to whatever the battery manufacturer recommends for absorptive charging (or to what the battery chemistry requires (such as lead-calcium), if no mfgr info is available), and then leave it charging the battery overnight (adjust the voltage up or down slightly depending on temperature, I usually shoot for 14.8V if it's cold out, 14.4 if it's cool-mild, or 14.1 if we're in a heat wave... It's not super-duper-critical that it matches dead-on with the -30mv/°C charging coefficient of a 12V lead battery). Remove from charging when the current tapers to less than 1 amp (if the battery hasn't seen 100% charge in awhile, it could take as much as 24 hours for it to reach 1A).

If the battery current drops to less than 1A in relatively short order, then the battery has probably already suffered some sulfation (that, or it's already fully charged). A charger with a dedicated desulfation mode would be needed to revive a sulfated battery (and there's no guarantee it'll come back).

 

[IdaSHO]

Batteries today certainly dont seem to last as long as they once did.

Lots of reasons I suppose, but I get every battery in our fleet on the nice charger for a de-sulfate and top off at least once a year, sometimes twice.

Normally I get it done as the cars come into the shop to have their winter tires fitted, then again when they go back to summer tires.

I used to go through batteries every 2-3 years. Since stating this routine about 10 years ago, I've yet to replace another battery.

 

[Airmapper]

For the record the CTEK 25000 is not on the recommended charger list for an Odyssey last I checked. The smaller unit is. I suspect they use similar programs though.

That said, I have a Group 31 Odyssey and picked up a CTEK 25000 on that same recommendation floating around, and I will say this, other chargers would not even acknowledge my battery was low, but the CTEK would go ahead and charge it for a good while where the others just flashed FULL at me.

I ultimately ended up with the proper Odyssey charger. I think it's BS, but if I'm still on that battery 8 years from now, I might be singing another tune. All I can say is I have some darn nice battery chargers now, a CTEK isn't a bad unit to have around even if I don't use it on the Odyssey anymore. I actually use it most as a 13.4v power supply for powering stuff on the bench since it has that mode.

Ducky's Dad said what I've heard a lot of an that is the Group 31's are a whole different animal and what you hear the most gripes about. The 34 is what I now wish I'd went with and probably doesn't apply to what you've read.

 

[Ducky's Dad]

For the record the CTEK 25000 is not on the recommended charger list for an Odyssey last I checked.

The Ctek 25000 was a recommended charger for the Odyssey Grp 31, and the Ctek 7002 was recommended for the smaller Odysseys. I could not get a 25000 because dealers thought California had banned them (not true), so I got a 7002 to try to keep my Odyssey 2150 happy. That battery is just sort of OK on the 7002, won't get to an OCV over about 12.65 even with multiple charge/desulfation cycles. Odyssey has changed their house-branded charger line, but did not yet have a charger suitable for the Grp 31. That may be another year, so I got one of the new, smaller Odyssey chargers because I'm tired of replacing batteries, and because Odyssey says it should work on the 31, but not as well as the new charger they are trying to get to market. The Ctek 7002 works fine on my Odyssey and Optima Grp 34s. One "problem" with the Odyssey Grp 31 is that when it is at 75% of full charge, it still has more ah and reserve than most Grp 34s at full charge, so you may not know the 31 is going bad unless you test it.