Stray electrons strike again

[DavidS]

Anyone else notice how easy it is to leave a cabin light on? The walk away lighting delays cabin light shut off so it’s hard to notice they are still on. Not sure if there’s a timer on the front seat map lights that will eventually turn them off or not, but I have figured out that you can’t turn them off without turning the truck back on and they stay on even after cycling power without physically turning them off. That doesn’t seem conducive to 12V battery life.

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[chl]

Anyone else notice how easy it is to leave a cabin light on? The walk away lighting delays cabin light shut off so it’s hard to notice they are still on. Not sure if there’s a timer on the front seat map lights that will eventually turn them off or not, but I have figured out that you can’t turn them off without turning the truck back on and they stay on even after cycling power without physically turning them off. That doesn’t seem conducive to 12V battery life.

Yes, I have seen that sometimes...I think if I had manually turned a light on, it will stay that way and I have to go back and manually turn it off...the automatic courtesy cabin light always turns off when I lock the truck otherwise.

Haven't really bothered to figure out all the details...probably in the manual somewhere?

 

[MaintGrl]

So, I have a Noco5 genius showing up today, this is a project day for me, so that will be on my work list. Just another observation, . . . . this problem so far has ONLY happened the last two times I charged my truck. I use level 2 charging, and I don't suspect any problem with the charger per se, But the fact that it happened both times I was charging, both times I had a departure conditioning, coinciding with the charging is starting to make me think there is a glitch there. In any case, will hook up the Noco, drive the truck and next Saturday night will put the truck on the charger and see what happens Sunday morn.

 

[MaintGrl]

Yes, I have seen that sometimes...I think if I had manually turned a light on, it will stay that way and I have to go back and manually turn it off...the automatic courtesy cabin light always turns off when I lock the truck otherwise.

Haven't really bothered to figure out all the details...probably in the manual somewhere?

Well, with my 96 Ranger, if I had left the door ajar, and walked away, the light would be on, but would time out after x minutes, and shut off, but I guess our intelligent trucks can't do that . . . .

 

[DavidS]

I level 1 charge my truck, so the 12V is pretty much always charging too if needed without the need for a battery tender, but I do worry that some day due to the small size of the battery, that the 12V is going to be dead because I forgot to turn the lights off. Haven’t really had that problem since my 83 Escort and I don’t need to have it happen now but I do have a jump battery these days instead of some giant jumper wires so I am unlikely to be stranded.

 

[chl]

I level 1 charge my truck, so the 12V is pretty much always charging too if needed without the need for a battery tender, but I do worry that some day due to the small size of the battery, that the 12V is going to be dead because I forgot to turn the lights off. Haven’t really had that problem since my 83 Escort and I don’t need to have it happen now but I do have a jump battery these days instead of some giant jumper wires so I am unlikely to be stranded.

Some owners have done some analysis of what happens with the 12v battery, and it is not something that would give me confidence that the battery is going to last very long.

1) the SOC is allowed to get down into the 70% range,

2) the charging during HVB charging never seems to fuily top off the 12v to 100%, and

3) because the battery SOC gets low, when the truck does charge the battery, the charging currents get rather high, higher than would be recommended for a 35AH AGM battery by any manufacturer

So owners have seen battery bulging and premature (less than 3 years) battery failure.

This was also an issue in ICE F-150's by the way based on looking at YouTube videos anyway.

Besides all that, fundamentally any and all lead-acid batteries last a lot longer when on a maintainer that keeps the battery at 100% as much as possible and uses a low charging current.

If not charged to 100%, the sulfates that form on the plates during discharging can become permanent.
If charged at too high a current the battery can heat up, bulge and lose electrolyte through venting.

This is all well known stuff about lead acid batteries - one of the first things I learned about in engineering school about batteries way back when.

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