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Worse than neglected, abused forklift battery...

greenbuggy

Stainless
Joined
Oct 6, 2005
Location
Firestone, CO
I get all the fun jobs...

I'm no forklift mechanic but I like to think I'm descent at electrical stuff. Have a customer whose old Baker forklift started acting funny, their idiot employee got under the dash with what was undoubtedly a Harbor Freight wire snips and $20 worth of parts and ~6 hours of rehab later I finally have all wiring back to "functional" as well as "protected from the environment".

So in the meantime he has decided to change his business model and is going to sell this forklift + charger and some other equipment he owns. After getting it back to runnable condition I moved it and discover battery is near-dead. Plug charger in to give it a charge (charger is a 36V 20 Amp charger as per data plate), I discover that the charger isn't actually charging, rectifier inside is dead. Replace rectifier, discover that the 15 minute countdown timer that is supposed to shut it off is also toast and never actually shuts the charger off. Le sigh. Just ordered a new one from eBay. Also checked the batteries and topped all the cells off with water where needed.

So with that said, I've tried charging the battery for a couple of 15 minute cycles the last couple of days, and the battery is taking something of a charge (at least the voltage gauge on the dash says it is and it'll move again) but after 15 minutes the amp gauge on the charger is still reading 25+ amps. I would normally expect the amp gauge to fall off when the battery has reached some sort of charge, but I don't know electric forklifts well enough to know how many 15 minute cycles that a full charge ought to take or how far apart these 15 minute cycles are supposed to be spaced.

Knowing full well that this forklift battery is at least several years old, has been drained excessively, was low on water in a couple cells and likely overcharged pretty badly a few times given the broken charger, is the best approach to keep doing 1-2 15 minute charge cycles with the 20 amp charger daily or to use 3x 12v trickle chargers on each 12 volt cell section to top it off?

As I said the owner has decided he's selling this thing and it looks like hell so I'm not looking to mislead anybody, just want to return it to his shop topped off and in as good of condition as possible for him to sell it.
 
20 amp charger on a forklift?

Usual batteries are 600 to 900 amp hours do if the battery was just dead at maybe 30 volts it would take days with a 20 amp charger to get it charged.

The label could have indicated line side current do that would be different.

There is another thread about a neglected forklift battery we posted on that has more suggestions regarding testing your battery.

Please read them as we are being lazy today.

If you see current charging then that is good.

Do not top off water until fully charged as it rises a bit.



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20 amp charger on a forklift?

Usual batteries are 600 to 900 amp hours do if the battery was just dead at maybe 30 volts it would take days with a 20 amp charger to get it charged.

The label could have indicated line side current do that would be different.

Given that it's a 110 volt input charger and has 10 gauge wire running from charger to battery plug I think 20-30A max output is probably accurate. I've definitely seen much bigger chargers for newer electric forklifts but they're all running higher input voltages.
 
It's possible that charger is just meant to maintain the batteries under normal operating conditions and can't provide enough amperage to resurrect them
 
Please read them as we are being lazy today.
And/or or find a manual or three for similar battery sizes. Never mind "brand" of FL, the battery tribe are an incestuous lot, so most of the kids look alike.

Charging a FL battery in 15 MINUTES would want a fair-stout Arc Welder as source. And a HAZMAT decon team to clear the lead and acid debris after it blew up.

Fifteen HOURS is closer, and even so, prolly @ a lot more than 20A source ELSE about two or three DAYS for this one.

Large battery that ain't healthy will leak faster than a small charger can catch up or keep up anyway.
 








 
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