A little miffed at Trojan...

Rngr275

As some of you know I have been struggling to get my SG up into the 1.277 range which is considered a "Full Charge" for my batteries. The literature that came with the batteries have a table that says 1.277= full charge, there web site says so also. I have talked to tech support there a few times and have been told that the SG of my batteries is 1.277 when fully charged and was told by them that I would need to do an EQ to raise the SG, which I did a couple times but it would never get quite that high and I would stop the EQ. I have been on all the forums and bugged you poor people to death about absorption voltage, and times, end amps, etc, etc.
Well I call my installer to find out where he got the batteries from and explained why I wanted to talk to them.... I wanted to verify the SG of the electrolyte the used. So Roy calls them and Trojan and the tell him that the only way to know is to check the date stamp on the negative terminal. A=January, B=February, etc.... and the number is the year... so an A1 battery was made Jan 2011.

Turns out that Trojan went to the 1.280SG in their RE batteries starting on F2 or WHich is JUne of this year. Anything before this uses 1.265. Mine are E2 or May 2012 which means my SG @ 100% is 1.265. I have talked to Trojan numerous times and have been assured that my batteries were 1.280 because the change was made in the spring of 2012. SO Be waned if you have Trojan RE batteries you need to check the stamping on the negative terminal to determine what the SG of the electrolyte used in your batteries truly is.

What really upsets me is that I did a couple EQ's to try and raise the SG on their recommendation and basically overcharged my brand new batteries. Luckily I was very diligent on measuring the SG during the EQ and never went too long since the SG would top out around 1.265-1.270... RIGHT WHERE IT SHOULD BE!

BB.

Re: A little miffed at Trojan...

Doh!

-Bill "Homer nods" B.

NorthGuy

Re: A little miffed at Trojan...

To puzzle you even more, these numbers are shifted 3 months, so that your warranty (which starts at the stamped date) would not count the time while they were on the shelf. For example, I received my batteries in August, and they're stamped J2 for September, which means the batteries were made in June.

inetdog

Re: A little miffed at Trojan...

NorthGuy wrote: »

To puzzle you even more, these numbers are shifted 3 months, so that your warranty (which starts at the stamped date) would not count the time while they were on the shelf. For example, I received my batteries in August, and they're stamped J2 for September, which means the batteries were made in June.

That could explain why the folks at Trojan "knew" that since the change had already been made in manufacturing before the date on the batteries, those batteries must have the new SG. :-)

"Urgent memo to left hand, Re: activities of right hand...."

Rngr275

Re: A little miffed at Trojan...

From my installer who has also been talking to Trojan:

Their customer support told me (Roy) that the documentation date was premature. That it was released
several weeks before the new production run hit the market. And that your date code falls within
the old production run. In other words, marketing and production didn't talk to each other.
That never happens in other industries ;-)

She admitted to him that this has caused a great deal of customer service issues....imagine that ;-)

We also discussed your charging protocols and voltage settings. We both agree that if you were not
able to reach 1.270 or 1.280 with all that charging, that this verifies that your SG is 1.265.