Thank you for this clear and necessary narration of battery maintenance procedures. About adding water ONLY after charging fully? We too have had clueless workers flood electrolyte all over- even onto the floor! ONE TIP for REALLY low batteries in very low use lifts. (We've had to charge batteries where the acid level is out of sight!.. So we make sure to bring water up just enough to cover all the plate surfaces, and THEN fully charge. This (so far) has never overflowed AND prevents charging only part of the plate surfaces, .
Well done, except, the verbiage in the industry is flawed. You mentioned... Boil over. Yes the batteries can boil over, but NOT due to heat. A battery should never be HOT. 149 degrees is the danger zone. 161 is the catastrophic zone where the battery is degrading! When Battery Professionals speak of a boil over, it is actually due to the acid going in and out of the plates. As a battery functions, the acid enters the plates. At charging the acid is pushed out. There is only so much physical room in the cell. So. If you water a battery at a discharged state, the acid will come out during the charge cycle and literally push the acid and water mixture out of the cells but not due to heat, due to physical room and expansion of volume due to the suspended acids coming out of the cells and needing space.
How low should I let the forklift's charge get before recharging. We do not use our lift but I few hours a week. We are typically using 1/2 of the charge per week. Should I simply recharge over the weekend at the end of the week or let the charge get lower before charging?
YES! Incorrect! IF you have a manual charger with a mechanical timer and it's set to 48 volts. You plug it into a lift with any computer systems and the lift is a 36 volt or a 24 volt, smaller than the set voltage of the mechanical charger, turn on the mechanical charger. YES. YOU CAN DESTROY THE COMPUTER COMPONENTS. LIKE A MODERN CAR, THE COMPUTER IS ACTIVE ON MANY TYPES OF EQUIPMENT. I HAVE SEEN IT HAPPEN. CUSTOMER NEGLIGENCE. Customer pay. Unfortunately, it was on a rental truck.
