questions about B7001 charging system.

[JosephGozo]

Hello. I have a 45AH battery (less than 3 yrs old) that is loosing charge slowly overnight. I have checked the charging output at the battery terminal (voltage). After start up at idle it is 12.80V and slowly increases to 13.35 at mid range rpm. After a 15 minutes work with tiller at full rpm it reads 14.68V (at full rpm) and at times keeps increasing. Is this ok ? is 14.68+ too high? high enough to burn a battery?

any person who can attach a link about how to check the charging system on a B7001 with a D750 engine with dynamo.?

thanks

 

[JosephGozo]

hi i found this...

B7100 Charging System Troubleshooting

Got Back from attending a relatives funeral at 2:00am this morning after a 650 mile drive. Got up at 7:00am went to the garage and tried to fire up the old tractor to find a dead battery!:confused: (first time she failed to start in the 3 years I've owned her:eek:) Used the booster to get her...

www.orangetractortalks.com

 

[85Hokie]

Joseph,

Basically you have already "checked" the charging system!!

Based on your information - the numbers are spot on! I have a B7100 (almost the same) that has a volt meter constantly on while running and at idle it show 12.5 ish, run the RPMS up and bit and I will hit 13 ish, get to WOT and it will be 14.5- 14.6 volts!

Your 45AH may be a bit small for this - but do you have ANYTHING aftermarket hook to the electrical system?

Sound like you may have a parasitic draw sucking the life out of the battery. Typically only two things would cause this on that model tractor - something that is hooked to the electrical system or the rectifier is bad.

Here is how to test that.

Pull off the negative end of the battery - take you volt/amp meter and move the lead to AMPS - typically moving the red lead to another hole in the meter.

Place one lead ON the battery and the other on the removed battery lead - thus closing the circuit.

Tell us what the reading is...... should be very very low in the milliamp range IF AT all.

 

[JosephGozo]

Sorry it is late to test this.


I went out and got myself another battery a Steco Power (french/Asian brand) 45AH and 400Amps. It is difficult to find a better option here with higher AH... these are batteries found on 1000cc japanese petrol cars.

all the extra circuits for a work lamp and 3 gauges are linked after the key so they should be dead with key removed.

the tractor was not used a lot between June and September. Occasional start up to tow the trailer for grass once a week and for a 15 minute drive at idle. Probably killed the battery that way.

I think it is dead because after a trickle charge on Friday i spent 30 minutes tilling and it looked charged the next morning it started but it was kind of weak and after an hour of heavy tillage i decided to turn it off to let it cool down and it barely spun the thing to life. I always start with the half compression lever.

I will give the battery another trickle charge and check the amps.

Joseph,

Basically you have already "checked" the charging system!!

Based on your information - the numbers are spot on! I have a B7100 (almost the same) that has a volt meter constantly on while running and at idle it show 12.5 ish, run the RPMS up and bit and I will hit 13 ish, get to WOT and it will be 14.5- 14.6 volts!

Your 45AH may be a bit small for this - but do you have ANYTHING aftermarket hook to the electrical system?

Sound like you may have a parasitic draw sucking the life out of the battery. Typically only two things would cause this on that model tractor - something that is hooked to the electrical system or the rectifier is bad.

Here is how to test that.

Pull off the negative end of the battery - take you volt/amp meter and move the lead to AMPS - typically moving the red lead to another hole in the meter.

Place one lead ON the battery and the other on the removed battery lead - thus closing the circuit.

Tell us what the reading is...... should be very very low in the milliamp range IF AT all.

 

[GreensvilleJay]

A 'trickle' charger can easily take 3-4 DAYS to recharge the battery.
If a '400A' battery is 1/2 dead ,it'll need 200 amps of electrons to recharge it. If the 'trickle' charger is rated for 2 amps....... 200/2=100 HOURS, so 4 days.
Now these are rough numbers...but show why 'overnight with trickle charger' doesn't really properlt fully recharge the battery.

 

[Vigo]

If the battery voltage falls substantially overnight when nothing is hooked to it, the battery is bad, so that part is simple.

As far as the voltage, 14.68v actually is 'too high' if it goes on for a long time. But, it doesn't mean that anything is wrong with the tractor. It just means that the tractor has a very primitive charging system that, while barely sufficient when working properly, still does not 'take great care' of the starter battery.

This is a good read about charging a flooded lead-acid battery if you have the patience: https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-403-charging-lead-acid

Most likely your scenario is simply that the battery was excessively sulfated (from sitting too long in a less than fully charged state with no 'maintenance' charging) and was shorted internally (because of 'sulfate dendrites' bridging some internal gap, etc) causing it to self-discharge slowly. Replacing the battery fixes the sulfation and self-discharge but it doesn't prevent it from reoccurring. What will prevent it from reoccurring is using a battery maintainer or simply operating the tractor more often.

If you want to improve the charging system on the tractor it is possible but it's a more involved topic. I wouldn't really rely on the tractor charging system to sufficiently maintain that battery unless you are using the tractor A. Weekly at least, B. At fairly high revs because that charging system accomplishes almost nothing at low revs, and C. For a sufficiently long time, say an hour. If you're not hitting those conditions i would definitely use some kind of battery maintainer.