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sarg314(at)gmail.com
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 Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2013 7:24 pm Post subject: pc680 life time |
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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
[quote][b]
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Painless
Joined: 10 Jan 2006
Posts: 40
Location: Peshtigo, Wisconsin
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| Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2013 7:34 pm Post subject: pc680 life time |
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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 <sarg314(at)gmail.com (sarg314(at)gmail.com)> wrote:
[quote]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
[b]
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_________________
Jeff Orear
RV6A N782P
Peshtigo, WI |
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vanremog(at)aol.com
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| Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2013 8:21 pm Post subject: pc680 life time |
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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
--
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bicyclop(at)pacbell.net
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| Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2013 9:09 pm Post subject: pc680 life time |
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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(at)aol.com (vanremog(at)aol.com) wrote: [quote] 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
--
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bobbyhester(at)twc.com
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| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 4:02 am Post subject: pc680 life time |
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Mine is 6 yes old and I'm passing 650 hrs. Still works great!
Sent from my Verizon iPhone
On Jun 6, 2013, at 10:23 PM, thomas sargent <sarg314(at)gmail.com (sarg314(at)gmail.com)> wrote:
[quote]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
[b]
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http://www.matronics.com/Navigator?RV-List |
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carl.froehlich(at)verizon
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| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 4:56 am Post subject: pc680 life time |
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Back when I was running dual Lightspeed ignitions I designed the power distribution to have independent left/right batteries (both PC-625s) so a single component failure would not result in ignition power being lost to both sides at the same time. The change out interval was to replace one battery every two years such that one was always less than two years old and the other less than four. I have long since remove the Lightspeed ignitions (many reasons) and now fly with pMags - so the ignition power requirement is gone. I still change out a battery every 2 years - the RV-10 is set up this way as well. The reason is to gain confidence that if the alternator dies the batteries have enough capacity to continue full panel IFR flight for at least two hours. At $90 or so each this is a cheap maintenance routine.
One note - if you beat a battery into the ground by leaving a master on or such, replace it. In most cases the damage is not reversible. If you can breathe some life back into it, use it on the bench or in a tractor.
A data point: I put a pulled PC-625 in one tractor that is now 10 years old. While not nearly the current drain of the airplane, the tractor still cranks it up every time.
Carl
From: owner-rv-list-server(at)matronics.com [mailto:owner-rv-list-server(at)matronics.com] On Behalf Of thomas sargent
Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2013 11:24 PM
To: rv-list
Subject: 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
| Quote: | | http://www.matronics.com/Navigator?RV-List |
01234567
[quote][b]
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rhdudley1(at)bellsouth.ne
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| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 5:10 am Post subject: pc680 life time |
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There is another very simple test. The cost is a couple of hours of your time.
While you are puttering around the hanger, run the avionics and other equipment in your airplane that you consider necessary for safe flight. Monitor the battery voltage and the time. When the voltage falls below what you consider minimum acceptable, note the time. That is the endurance of your battery.
Regards,
Rich Dudley
On 6/7/2013 1:09 AM, Ed Holyoke wrote:
[quote] 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(at)aol.com (vanremog(at)aol.com) wrote: [quote] 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
--
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larywil(at)comcast.net
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| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 7:16 am Post subject: pc680 life time |
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Tom,
Your battery should be good for another 2-3 years. These batteries are
actually designed for deep discharge, so you probably did no damage.
Good luck.
Louis Willig
On 6/6/2013 11:23 PM, thomas sargent wrote:
| Quote: | 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.
|
| | - The Matronics RV-List Email Forum - | | | Use the List Feature Navigator to browse the many List utilities available such as the Email Subscriptions page, Archive Search & Download, 7-Day Browse, Chat, FAQ, Photoshare, and much more:
http://www.matronics.com/Navigator?RV-List |
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Dale Ensing
Joined: 11 Jan 2006
Posts: 571
Location: Aero Plantation Weddington NC
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| Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2013 8:26 am Post subject: pc680 life time |
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Have had a PC680 in my 6A for nine years. Still starts the O-360, with high compression pistons, with no hesitation. I do keep a Battery Minder on it when not flying.
Dale Ensing
On Jun 7, 2013, at 11:16 AM, Louis Willig <larywil(at)comcast.net> wrote:
| Quote: |
Tom,
Your battery should be good for another 2-3 years. These batteries are actually designed for deep discharge, so you probably did no damage. Good luck.
Louis Willig
On 6/6/2013 11:23 PM, thomas sargent wrote:
> 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.
>
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| | - The Matronics RV-List Email Forum - | | | Use the List Feature Navigator to browse the many List utilities available such as the Email Subscriptions page, Archive Search & Download, 7-Day Browse, Chat, FAQ, Photoshare, and much more:
http://www.matronics.com/Navigator?RV-List |
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_________________
Dale Ensing
RV-6A
Aero Plantation
Weddington NC |
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