Sunday, 6 May 2012

How to test a battery

To test a battery, you first turn the lights on for about a minute to see if the battery holds it charge. After that you connect the multimeter to the positive and negative terminals of the battery, and set it to volts. If the voltage reads 12.6 volts it means that it's 100% charged. 12.2 volts means 50% charged and 11.9 volts means that the battery is not charged at all. If the battery is charged, you turn the car on and turn the lights and other things inside the car to make sure that the voltage stays around 14 - 14.5 volts. (this means that the alternator is working correctly.)


This video gives a good step by step guide on how to do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bzz7P3qNHcE 

To check if there is any current being drawn from the car, you link the battery into series with the multimeter and set it to amps. To do this you take the clamp off the negative terminal and touch the positive wire (the red one) to the clamp and the negative wire (the black one) to the negative terminal of the battery. It should read 0.01 amps (or around there), this means that there is nothing drawing current from the battery while the car is off.


This one shows you how to check for Current Draw:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNzZSsuQthY&feature=related

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