Battery Tester

chieffan

chieffan

Tractorologist
Member
Ordered a Konnwei KW 208 car battery tester which showed up yesterday. Opened the box and the instruction manual is a 4" X 5" booklet with micro print. Tried to enlarge it on the copier but this cheep printer I have won't do that sort of thing, only print mode. Found a web site that happened to have the manual for that unit and got it printed out. Looks like a decent unit, tests several battery and vehicle (tractor) conditions, charging system, cranking, etc. Haven;t figured what SOH or SOC stand for yet. Not mentioned in the manual. Has something to do with the battery condition. Might try it out this morning on a battery I took out and put a different one it and charged this one up good. May be a trade in or may go back in a tractor.
 
I got this little guy off Amazon a while back, seems to do all that testing.

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State of health is "how" good or "how bad it is. Just like the doc tells you when you go in for a checkup.
I've got a couple of pretty expensive battery testers but I make a living by evaluating such things.
My carbon pile one (newer version of a SUN Vat 40 as the gas stations all used to have,) that one don't leave home no More
and last year I bought a SOLAR brand BA 427 for work, prices all over the place on those. I paid $280, have seen same tester with an asking price of double that and more elsewhere. At the time NAPA had a sale,
could have gotten it there for $420 at the time.

I just bought the amprobe attachment for it a few weeks ago for checking charging systems.
Work has a similar cheaper version of this one. They don't load the battery, but among other things measure the resistance within. My BA 427 though has come up with a readout of "BAD CELL" a few times. Somehow it can tell how many cold crank amps are left in the battery.and gives the SOH and SOC info

I feel that the carbon pile ones are still more accurate, sometimes I get a "good" reading on one and a "bad" reading from the other tester, I tend towards believing whichever one says "bad" in that case.
Alot of people don't know but fully charged, those batteries should be around 12.6/ and 12.3 is only about 50-60% charged.
 
chieffan said:
Ordered a Konnwei KW 208 car battery tester which showed up yesterday. Opened the box and the instruction manual is a 4" X 5" booklet with micro print. Tried to enlarge it on the copier but this cheep printer I have won't do that sort of thing, only print mode. Found a web site that happened to have the manual for that unit and got it printed out. Looks like a decent unit, tests several battery and vehicle (tractor) conditions, charging system, cranking, etc. Haven;t figured what SOH or SOC stand for yet. Not mentioned in the manual. Has something to do with the battery condition. Might try it out this morning on a battery I took out and put a different one it and charged this one up good. May be a trade in or may go back in a tractor.
Click to expand...

I had picked up the Viking unit found here.

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For decades, I was a loyal owner of several Schumacher. But the units were not very reliable with one in 2020 caught fire. The units were power hungry too with heavy transformers. In 2016, I did grab a Schumacher 12V solid state charger, but if left unattended, it over heats the batteries. Not good.

The Viking got great reviews everywhere I looked. Grabbed it in 2019 for a mere $29. It tests like the Konnwei KW 208 and also charges too. It's solid state, prevents over charging, and works on 6V & 12V batteries. It starts off in automatic mode, but one button push places it in manual mode if you desire.

The benefit of the solid state is the power company meter will not spin heavily like the old school transformer types.
 
I have on of those old big heavy chargers I picked up at auction several years ago. Has different voltage setting for charge rate, timer, meter. Heavy old brute. Nice thing I like is the timer. Can set it for and hour and walk off. Have two lighter duty with the 55 amp boost that is kind of handy at times.
 
I have the old analog style, it still works good. Would like one of the new digital ones like they have at NAPA for checking batteries. It will also check your charging system also.
 
If the battery is checked while in the vehicle it will test battery condition, cranking test and charging test. Will hold the results for review till disconnected or delete is selected.
 
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