Supercub battery

[bryanchurch06]

I've been charging my battery with a noco genius charger thru a sae cable attached directly to the battery. My issue is the battery would never fully charge, I attribute it to cold in an unheated garage? So yesterday I attached the charger directly to the battery with the cable clips and it charged with no issue at all. So do I need to replace my sae cable? Or is it the length? What am I missing? This is the cable I installed

 

[SneakyDingo]

I wonder if there's some leakage from your existing cable(s) that causes it to think it never finishes charging, because the charge is like... going somewhere else. That's the only thing I can think of if you've isolated the cable as the issue. Either the cable from your charger to SAE is the problem, or from the SAE plug to the battery is the problem.

I think if it were me, I'd get a second SAE cable, panels off, connect that to the battery and charge it using the charger, and see if it finishes charging. If it finishes, it was your SAE cables. If it doesn't, it was your cables from the charger.

 

[m in sc]

never had this issue on angies super cub and it has a long cable. id suspect the charger isnt dealing w the voltage drop thru the cable. the battery tender we use on angies bike has like a 6 foot cable, but the tender compensates.

leaking? like a short? no. def not it, it would throw an error on the charger.

 

[SneakyDingo]

Short to ground was the case I was referring to. I've had it happen before with cheap cables between the power supply and the circuit, and spent way too long trying to resolve it when I should have started with using better quality cables in the first place (IIRC the first time it happened it was 3-4mA on a 600 mA current source, one of the few times I was using a current source instead of a voltage source). If the charger would pick that up can probably rule that out then but I've had a few PSU's that don't pick up, enough that I now run all my chargers on a timer as a backup preventative measure.

I'd still start with reinstalling a SAE cable, testing again, and then replacing the cable if necessary.

 

[Kev250R]

First thing I would do is make sure the connections to the battery for the SAE cable you're using are clean and tight. Also make sure that the SAE cable isn't kinked or bent sharply (or hasn't been in the past).

On a somewhat related note I recently found one of my VOM's was giving me lower-then normal Voltage readings. I use a Meter daily as part of my job and rarely have one not in arms reach. I'm partial to Fluke and Klein Meters for work and have an older unit I normally keep on my workbench. However the other day I needed to check the Volts on a battery, my normal garage Meter wasn't around so I grabbed an older Craftsman unit, checked the battery and it showed lower then I thought it should. On a whim I grabbed another Meter, checked the battery again, using the same process and sure enough there was a ~2VDC difference between the two Meters! It surprised me as I'd never seen that much of a difference between Meters before.

 

[bryanchurch06]

I've checked the connections, they are tight. Cables aren't kinked, but the charger will not fully charge when plugged into sae connector, put clips on and connect positive and ground to battery and charger will charge and go into maintenance mode. As a side note I find the supercub discharges quicker than the trail I assume it's the smart key and alarm? So I think I have a bad sae cable. Going to buy a new one and test the theory.

 

[m in sc]

it's voltage drop in the cable, I agree prob a bad cable.