battery for walker

[Hogpin Bowl]

walker, 11 months old and the battries are going bad.

kegel said i have 1 month left of a 12 month warranty.

they want a bunch and only give a 12 month warranty for a new pair.


i have found a odyssey pc 1200 battery for 233.99 with a 36 month warranty for $233.99

will this battery work for a walker, if i can get two within .03 volts of each other.

category: starting lighting and ignition
brand: odyssey
length: 7.87 inch
width : 6.6 inch
height: 6.8 inch
weight: 36.52
capacity: 44ah
cell : flat plate
chem: lead acid
cold cranking amps :550
voltage :12.00

[Marty Murphy]

You got a Batteries Plus near you? Thats where I get mine for about that price.

Marty - Pro Bowl West

[mikeb]

Just remember they must be matched, as stated above. Other than that it doesn't make a difference where the batteries come from. Another case in point: Vacuum motors for QAMF/ Century machines is about $100 less if you get the vacuum motor from Grainger, even though it's an identical part!

[shamefowjze]

Also bear in mind that if your batteries die in 12 months Odyssey will say the batteries are still good. Our application in a lane machine is unique. you can pull a bad battery out of a lane machine and put it in an ATV, boat, or whatever and it will work fine. so the Odyssey warranty really doesn't mean anything.

[Steve Stafford (JBEES)]

Each Odyssey that I have had fail has lost a cell...and Batteries Plus honored the warranty.

And I will ask this question for those that may know...how do you match a set of batteries? The amount of voltage that is on a battery can vary based on the charge that is on it and the charger that actually did the charge. No one at Batteries Plus understood "matching batteries". Just because you measured the voltage on the pair of batteries and they were equal does not mean they would hold the same voltage after they were charged. No one at Kegel could explain it to me either. They just told me theirs are "matched"

[keeth]

Steve this is a great question!

[Steve Stafford (JBEES)]

Since the batteries are charged and used in series...they are considered one battery by the charger. When the cells are "full" and will not accept any further charge...the charger should stop. Since our setup does not include any way of monitoring each cell (can't as we used sealed batteries) there is no way of balancing between cells. Even if we found a pair of batteries that could hold the same State Of Charge as a whole...they may still have unbalanced cells making the entire process of selecting balanced batteries useless as it is the individual cells that determine the strength of the battery itself.

[keeth]

The old one weak link in the chain theory!

[BillHolota]

The idea behind "Matching batteries" is to have 2 batteries of the same age and state of charge (SOC). On the odyssey batteries SOC can be determined by checking the voltage. The batteries come fully charged from Odyssey and every battery has some sort of self discharge from sitting on the shelf. By using 2 batteries of the same voltage you are doing the best you can in matching them. Unless you get lucky enough to get 2 batteries in sequential serial numbers, that would be ideal.

The main issue is capacity, just because the 2 batteries have the same voltage it does not mean that they have the same capcity. The problem gets real bad once you run the batteries to where the machine blacks out, very bad!! Once you see your battery approach 21volts under full load, get it on the charger ASAP! Once you over discharge a battery it loses capacity and risk damaging one of the cells, once this happens the 2nd battery has to carry the damaged battery.

If you run into a situation where someone forgets to charge the machine and they run it til the machine blacks out......
I would recommend investing in a cheap 12v agm charger to help put the batteries back in balance by charging each battery individually. It wouldn't hurt to peoriodically check the voltage of each battery AFTER you run the lanes.