# charge current not tapering off! help!



## EVfun (Mar 14, 2010)

Without more information that doesn't seem unusual. 3 hours at 9 amps is just 27 amp hours. How many amp hours did you use? (or how far did you drive it before charging) You where only at 7.1 volts per battery, average. Old golf cart batteries can have pretty high finish currents (8 amps isn't uncommon.)

You should resume charging and as the voltage starts to stabilize at 142 volt check the voltage of each battery. The goal is to see if they are pretty closely matched at that none are getting noticeably warmer than the others. Then you can stop again if there is any possible issues. 

With the limited information it is hard to tell if you may have a battery or charger issue -- or no problem at all. A check of the specific gravity of each cell will help determine state of charge. It should be done before you try charging more because if the batteries have been bubbling those little bubbles can get in the hydrometer and stick to the balls, making an accurate reading impossible.

P.S. - It looks like you have the Ion-1 kit car EV that Steven Lough, the president of the Seattle Electric Vehicle Association, used to own.


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

I never trust SOC on my batteries except after a known charge cycle. Mine suck up all the amps I can push into them for about 4 hours, but that is 1/2 empty at start. I never get below 3 amps on my string. Check resting voltage after overnight, check specific gravity (best indicator). See what charging voltage is, Should be 14.1 to 14.8 per 12v set, 7.05 to 7.4 for 6 v batteries, so at 142 sounds about right for 20 string of - 6 volts. I have found all my digital amp gauges are all over the place, went with an old VW analog dash gauge after I fried the the Simpson.

milliamp meter? bit low for charging unless there is a shunt somewhere. 

cool vehicle. are you the original owner?


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## ion1 (May 21, 2012)

thanks for the response. yes it is the ion-1 that steven slough used to own, sorry for the lack of info but im a newb to this. so what i have is yes a milliamp guage that runs through a 400k resistor. when i first installed these brand new batteries it read .65 milliamps at 130 volts then i drove it about 6 miles and up a really steep hill, it drained it to .4 milliamps and 120 volts. after my 3 hour charge session i had milliamperage of .85 and 130 volts so i unplugged it. i believe it is full but amperage never tapered off and actually increased slightly! just dont want to overcharge the new batteries thanks


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## ruckus (Apr 15, 2009)

You are on the wrong track. Give up and sell that sick car to me now. 

As in, I LOVE that body. What kit is it?

The charger, who knows? It looks sketchy. I would judge charge off volts. Are the batts up to max voltage or not? Tapering should happen near max voltage. Can you adjust the voltage? What type of batts do you have? 

Definitely more pics...


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## ion1 (May 21, 2012)

individual batt. voltage is at 6.3v us battery says full open voltage is 7.75 for the us 2200xc which is a 232AH battery total voltage is now at 124.6v and my milliampere guage says .65 again specific gravity tested at 1.225 indiacating a 70% charge or so. it seems that i should continue charging what are some obvious ways to detect over charging? oh yes and the pics these are old except for one of the dash shots, the car is ready for paint and i already re-wired the whole thing and made a carpet for it!


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

Im my HO, your batteries were about right for the 6 mile jaunt (quick and dirty mind you, based on my situation). your charger sounds suspect. get your self a good quality specific gravity checker, and a decent cheap voltage meter. I'm guessing that when the meter you have says 9 mills, it really is 9 amps which doesn't sound that abnormal for your pack. It is a bit low, but that will be a slower charge. You want to see about 118 to 125 volts across the charger and total pack for those 9 amps unless there is a current limit setting that has been fiddled with. Voltage should rise from starting levels as time passes up to the 142 v limit, at which point the batteries should bubble for about an hour. take a gravity reading across the cells and look for 1.270 (it is green on mine) to 1.300. 

I don't recall that charger as being all that reliable to start with and the picture suggests it has been fiddled with. You can trust your hydrometer, even if it is a $4.00 autozone chinese copy.

and; for what it is worth, today, at 78 degrees F, I finally got less than 2 amps on float. I'm not sure how to detect overcharge, I wasn't sure it is possible when not exceeding 7.1 per battery and not boiling off the water. D'OH!! if there isn't any water covering the cells plates, it is overcharged. Gawd, sometimes I worry about myself.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

ion1 said:


> individual batt. voltage is at 6.3v us battery says full open voltage is 7.75 for the us 2200xc which is a 232AH battery total voltage is now at 124.6v and my milliampere guage says .65 again specific gravity tested at 1.225 indiacating a 70% charge or so. it seems that i should continue charging what are some obvious ways to detect over charging? oh yes and the pics these are old except for one of the dash shots, the car is ready for paint and i already re-wired the whole thing and made a carpet for it!


What is the measurement of milliampere used for in charging? Nice VW. It should keep you busy. As far as I know you need to be looking at amperage not milliampere. You need an amp gauge to check. My first build was a 64 Ghia lead sled. I used 96 volts and I used an old Lester Charger. What size motor is in your vehicle. Looks like it may be a 9" ADC. Can't tell for sure. 

Is there any way you can ditch the lead batteries and put in Lithium? 

Pete


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

ruckus said:


> You are on the wrong track. Give up and sell that sick car to me now.
> 
> As in, I LOVE that body. What kit is it?
> 
> ...


It is a Manta Montage VW based Kit car. 










Pete


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## ion1 (May 21, 2012)

it is a manta montage! no way to ditch the lead acid they are brand new i just dumped 2200$ on them, would be nice though. the milliamp guage is not for charging it is hooked up to the whole pack all the time so it reads even when the car is "off" i believe since it has a resistor for load it is showing me avaliable amperage, (help me with my thinking). i have pulled 300 amps according to my multimeter in second gear up hill, i think this is the highest load it will ever encounter. is that safe? motor temps stayed within reason i believe maybe 150 degrees F. the motor is a prestolite mtc 4001. so what i am getting so far is to keep charging till i reach my 155v limit (7.75v per batt *20+155v) and the specific gravity should be 1.3 but i think my milliamp guage will be maxed out at 1milliamp the last time i did this and drove it one battery exploded but those were very old. voltage was rising with charge as was the milliamps reading, so keep going?


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

You need an amp gauge on your charger or on one of the inputs to monitor amperage. One sensitive enough to pick up like 20 amps. I don't think your going to be putting more than that through the charger into the battery. The amp gauge in your vehicle is for large amperage draws and not small inputs like you get when charging. 127.4 volts resting after charge. 1.27 Specific Gravity is what you are looking at fully charged and resting. Does your amp gauge really read in milliamps? Got a pic of the amp gauge face? 

Put your amp meter on the battery side then on the motor side to see what you get for each. 

So the gauge you have is for drawing and not charging. Don't bother with that one. That is for driving and for high amps. Get one for low amps like 20 or 30 amps and check the amps while charging. It needs to be in the charge circuit so you can see. I bet your charger is working just fine. 

Pete


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## ruckus (Apr 15, 2009)

Yep, a total waste of time. Better sell it. To meeeee.

Seriously though, neat rig. And already set up electric? or did you do the conversion?

I definitely want to see the vid of you burying the 160 mph speedo. 

As for charging, it definitely sounds like you are on the right track in terms of being cautious. There are lots of reports of folks toasting the batts on the first run/charge. 

Slow and steady wins the race.


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## ion1 (May 21, 2012)

onegreenev said:


> You need an amp gauge on your charger or on one of the inputs to monitor amperage. One sensitive enough to pick up like 20 amps. I don't think your going to be putting more than that through the charger into the battery. The amp gauge in your vehicle is for large amperage draws and not small inputs like you get when charging. 127.4 volts resting after charge. 1.27 Specific Gravity is what you are looking at fully charged and resting. Does your amp gauge really read in milliamps? Got a pic of the amp gauge face?
> 
> Put your amp meter on the battery side then on the motor side to see what you get for each.
> 
> ...


the charger has an amp guage on it from 0-20 amps i have checked this to be an accurate reading with my digital multimeter 127.4 volts seems uncharged to me as u can see in my last post i think a full charge would be 155v. got to go to work now will be back this afternoon to resume charging thanks all for the input really appreciate it!


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

ion1 said:


> the charger has an amp guage on it from 0-20 amps i have checked this to be an accurate reading with my digital multimeter 127.4 volts seems uncharged to me as u can see in my last post i think a full charge would be 155v. got to go to work now will be back this afternoon to resume charging thanks all for the input really appreciate it!


You say you have 20 batteries and they look like 6 volt batteries. 6.37 volts is the open voltage after being charged and allowed to sit at a rest. The surface charge should be dissipated. So with 20 batteries you will have a fully charged pack at resting when your pack is at 127.4 volts open voltage. The list I posted of voltages and specific gravity is accurate. So after only 3 hours I doubt that your amperage would be dropping much. My pack took 5 or so hours to charge up. What are your expectations for your batteries? Consider saving up for lithium cells. 

Your motor should be just fine. 120 volt system is good. VW platform is good too. 

The amp gauge in your car should not be showing amperage. It should be only for showing discharge. Go by the amp gauge with your charger. Are you sure that the voltage is adjustable? I am thinking that the adjustability is that you can charge with either 110 volt outlet or 220 outlet. I'd bet that if you charged from 220 instead of 110 you will charge much faster and you will see a drop in amperage much sooner. 

Pete 

142 volts sounds fine. If you get your pack to an end voltage of 142 that would be 7.1 volts for each battery which is right on the money. After resting you should see more like 127 volts. Maybe a bit more. The 142 volts is charging voltage and not resting open voltage after the surface charge dissipates.


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## ion1 (May 21, 2012)

oh ok i was getting confused because the manufactuer (us battery) says the voltage is supposed to be 7.75 per 6volt batt. but it should settle down to 6.3v after surface charge dissapates huh? charging it now, its at 138.5v and rising, holding 9 amps steady....should taper off near maximum voltage. right?


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Yes it will


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## ion1 (May 21, 2012)

yes amperage is tapering but i have to adjust by hand when i begin charging i turn up my voltage knob 3/4 of the way then i slowly turn the amperage knob up about 3/4 of the way and my on charger amperage guage comes on suddenly, then it bounces and i fiddel with the knobs until it finally settles and the amp guage steadies out. now that it is getting full the amp guage started to fluctuate again so i turned down amperage and nothing happened then turned down voltage and it steadied out again. what is happening that makes the amperage fluctaute so rapidly? im using single phase 220v


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## tburch1 (Mar 26, 2012)

I have a similar problem. Just completed my Ford Ranger conversion. I have 24 x 6V pack Trojan T105's and a Zivan NG3 charger. 

The charger doesn't ease up and the batteries were bubbling for about 2hours before I shut it down.

The pack was at 153V after resting for a few hours. When I turned the charger back on it was 170V. Hmmmm? All I can figure is that I still have a bad battery somewhere, but I checked the sp. gr. and load tested all of 'em a month ago. There were a couple of weak links, but they didn't seem bad.

Could there be a problem with the charger? How could I test it?


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## ion1 (May 21, 2012)

just got done charging mine amperage went all the way down to 1.5 @131.5volts seemed good but checked specific gravity and got 1.23 (fair).............what gives?


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

ion1 said:


> just got done charging mine amperage went all the way down to 1.5 @131.5volts seemed good but checked specific gravity and got 1.23 (fair).............what gives?


Not fully charged yet I guess. Still not a terrible charge. How long did it take to get to this charge level?

You have what seems like an old charger. You might look at getting a good used Elcon charger for lead acid batteries. Damn good chargers. I have two by mine are for lithium. It could be your not properly configuring the charger. It is old. Do you have a manual for that charger? Maybe someone else can help with that one. At 131.5 volts your not fully charged yet. But you keep changing your voltage and amperage.

A manual would be great. 

Pete


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## EVfun (Mar 14, 2010)

ion1 said:


> just got done charging mine amperage went all the way down to 1.5 @131.5volts seemed good but checked specific gravity and got 1.23 (fair).............what gives?


Uh, a 120 volt pack will not be charged at 131.5 volts (unless you are measuring after the charger has been shut off.) That is only 6.57 volts average for each 6 volt battery. You will need to get them to at least 7 volts each, better would be 7.5 volts each for golf cart batteries (though old batteries may have difficulty getting to that voltage.) That is 140 to 150 volts for the pack.


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## alvin (Jul 26, 2008)

Here is a Link for battery charging.


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## ion1 (May 21, 2012)

131.5volts was after charging and a little rest, maybe 40 mins. checked today and resting voltage was 128.6v so plugged it back in today and this time i was able to adjust to 150.09v @ 3.1amps thats as high as i can get the voltage hopefully this will do it. batteries are not bubbling but do smell like acid. yesterday during the bulk charge i was only able to get voltage up to 142 then it came down with the amperage tapering nothing i could do to keep voltage high. sounds like a pretty bad charger haw?


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

I think your near the upper end of the charge anyway so seeing only 3.1 amps or so is not surprising. Once your at or near the end of charge your voltage goes up as your amperage goes down. It may still take a good hour or two like this to finish the charge. You will also find out that the first part of the discharge curve drops pretty quickly then a steady drop until your at the end of your discharge curve. The lead acid curve is more like a dropping line rather than a curve. But the first part does drop fast. I think your charger will be fine. I think it is more a matter of learning how to best set it up for charging your batteries than anything else. It is an old system but it should still work fine. An Elcon would be better. It is a plug it in and forget it system. When its done your batteries are charged. No muss and no fuss.

Have you taken your ride out for a spin yet? Let us know how that goes. And more photos would be good too for fun. 

Pete


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

anything above 7.2 each and they should bubble, definitely by 7.4. the acid smell points to that you probably are outgassing. You may need to remove the caps from the most negative and positive to verify. What is the specific gravity?

During my bubble phase, my currents bounce about 1/2 to 3/4 amp, but they Are still 5-6 amps. 150 is the equalization voltage for your pack, after charging is done, about 1 hr.


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## ion1 (May 21, 2012)

US battery says charge the 2200xc at 7.75v per battery http://www.usbattery.com/usb_faqs.html So last night i continued charging at 154.8 volts and slowly tapered amperage from 5-3.1amps over about 4 hours, i got my individual battery voltage up to 7.74 before i turned it off. the batteries were bubbling with small bubbles like soda carbonation the whole time over 7.2v per battery.anyways my cheap specific gravity tester still only reads 1.26 if i average out the different battery readings should i continue charging until i get to 1.3 or at least 1.275? the batteries are brand new.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

It could be that your new batteries have a Specific Gravity of 1.275. I'd keep an eye on them and log your Specific Gravity over some time. I'd start using them. Exercise your batteries. Go have some fun. Log your voltages and charge time and Specific Gravity. It is a good thing to log your data to understand how things work. Since you don't know you need to learn. Go have some fun. Enjoy your new ride. Don't hammer your batteries. Lead Acid are not as tough as you might think. They are built to handle vehicles.


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## Agust Sigurdsson (Oct 25, 2009)

ion1 said:


> it is a manta montage! no way to ditch the lead acid they are brand new i just dumped 2200$ on them, would be nice though. the milliamp guage is not for charging it is hooked up to the whole pack all the time so it reads even when the car is "off" i believe since it has a resistor for load it is showing me avaliable amperage, (help me with my thinking). i have pulled 300 amps according to my multimeter in second gear up hill, i think this is the highest load it will ever encounter. is that safe? motor temps stayed within reason i believe maybe 150 degrees F. the motor is a prestolite mtc 4001. so what i am getting so far is to keep charging till i reach my 155v limit (7.75v per batt *20+155v) and the specific gravity should be 1.3 but i think my milliamp guage will be maxed out at 1milliamp the last time i did this and drove it one battery exploded but those were very old. voltage was rising with charge as was the milliamps reading, so keep going?


Hi.
You are clearly on the wrong track.

If this milliampermeter you are referring to has a 400 k resistor in series with it then it is obviously intended to indicate a voltage value but not a current value of any significance.
Assuming that the meter has a full scale range of 1 mA and internal resistance of say 100 ohms it will take a voltage of 400 Volts thru this series circuit to give full scale reading on the meter.

Ohm's law: 400 Volts / (400.000 + 100) Ohms = 0.001 Amper = 1 mA.

If you want to watch the charge current which I would guess to be somewhere between 5 and 100 Amperes you have to look somewhere else. 


Good luck

Agust


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

bubbling is good. 154 is good also but realize that while bubbling you are also converting your water to gas. You do know that the acid does not mix exactly and the denser stuff will be at the bottom of the battery? All the sources say to fill and empty the hydro at least 3 times violently, and then on the 4 th try, take the reading. I have also found the I can vary my specific reading 10 points by a slight squeeze on the bulb, but not enough to expel the fluid. I have an el cheapo $4.00 tester with 4 different colored balls that I use to stop the bulk charging on the 1st pass. let it sit for a couple of hours, and then read the "resting voltage". Sounds to me right now that you are as close to fully charged as practical.

yes the series resistor indicated a voltage meter, BUT, if the meter is a standard american style D'aversonal, it will be 50 mv full scale deflection, SO, 200 amps could also mean 50 mv across the meter (hence the availability of 50 m. shunts). a verification with an external meter would help here. volts, amps and meter indicated value. if it is wired and hot all the time that suggested it is a voltage indicator for pack charge status.


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## ion1 (May 21, 2012)

thanks all for the info. I believe i am getting a full charge or at least close enough for now. been really busy painting the car, and will be for a while. i'll post a new thread soon about my restoration of the ion 1! thanks again


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## ruckus (Apr 15, 2009)

Umm.. so you are selling to me. Yes?


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## ion1 (May 21, 2012)

i will be looking to sell in the near future. Think im going to paint it a dark red like cherry or something. i like the flat black though. what do you all think?


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## somanywelps (Jan 25, 2012)

ion1 said:


> i will be looking to sell in the near future. Think im going to paint it a dark red like cherry or something. i like the flat black though. what do you all think?


That looks too much like automotive plastic.

That's a racecar, plain and simple. White job with the racing highlights (non-centered stripes?) would be good.


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

Sorry, I like either red or candy red. doesn't look bad now however.

Thought you were going to drive it some.

BTW the batteries ain't going to like just sitting for long.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

ruckus said:


> Umm.. so you are selling to me. Yes?


No, he's gonna sell to me.


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## [email protected] (Jul 17, 2019)

*Ion One for sale (yes, really)*

Hello to all! I've been the caretaker of the Ion 1 since 2014. Sadly, I've spent no time on it at all (it's been garaged the whole time). It ran when I bought it, but never got it to charge correctly.

I'd assume all of the marine batteries in it are now pretty much lead paperweights.

If anyone is interested and SERIOUS about working on this car (converting this to L-Ion) and getting it back on the road, I will be willing to part with it for a (relatively) small amount of money. 

I have about 10 grand into it. I need to sell it because we're moving and I can't take it with me.

Let me know.

-Russ H.
S F Bay Area
California

PS Car will be gone, one way or another, in the next 2-3 weeks, tops. : )


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