oscar
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keeping this short and brief, and won't go into battery load / rapid discharge tests because none of you will have the equipment to carry that sort of task out. i also attached a multimeter symbol reference incase any of you guys are unsure which symbol means what.
set your multimeter to 20V DC as seen in the picture below and connect the black negative lead to the black negative terminal on the battery and then connect the red positive lead to the red positive terminal on the battery. you should get a reading like this
a good conditioned 12 volt, 6 cell battery should be between 12.6 and 12.7 (12.6 divided by 6 cells = ???) volts but 12.5 is just in the realms of fair condition but we'll ignore this for now.
now you want to start your engine and repeat this again. this time you will be expecting to see something like this on the multimeter display as seen in the picture below. a general rule of thumb without getting into complications is that an alternator which is charging your battery will run 2-3 volts above battery voltage. so expect anywhere from 14 volts to 15 volts maximum. anywhere around the middle 14's is spot on though guys
i will update the rest of this with the more technically correct ways of checking battery condition, voltage drop, battery load / rapid discharge, checking CCA etc for the sake of being able to understand what's going on!
set your multimeter to 20V DC as seen in the picture below and connect the black negative lead to the black negative terminal on the battery and then connect the red positive lead to the red positive terminal on the battery. you should get a reading like this
a good conditioned 12 volt, 6 cell battery should be between 12.6 and 12.7 (12.6 divided by 6 cells = ???) volts but 12.5 is just in the realms of fair condition but we'll ignore this for now.
now you want to start your engine and repeat this again. this time you will be expecting to see something like this on the multimeter display as seen in the picture below. a general rule of thumb without getting into complications is that an alternator which is charging your battery will run 2-3 volts above battery voltage. so expect anywhere from 14 volts to 15 volts maximum. anywhere around the middle 14's is spot on though guys
i will update the rest of this with the more technically correct ways of checking battery condition, voltage drop, battery load / rapid discharge, checking CCA etc for the sake of being able to understand what's going on!
