Charge 2 x 6V on 12V Charger

I think it's Phil-ignorance ;-) ...Jim Thompson

(...)

These folks put three car batteries in series to supply their portable welder with up to 350 A.

(...)

You could be passing up a real opportunity.

--Winston

(...)

Like Ralph's 6.2 V power zeners, with temperature compensation as you say. I suspect a switchmode MOSFET solution would run cooler, be cheaper and run more reliably.

--Winston

I dunno. It was a B50T Victor Trial with a plastic after - market tank. No gold stars visible and certainly none earned.

:)

Starting procedure was a comedy skit. I owned the bike for 5 years.

It started once ( 1 time) (Total).

I wore out a kickstart quadrant over the years to obtain that one start.

Which probably happened pretty often, thanks to the Prince of Darkness. ;)

Cheers

Phil "Former Triumph owner" Hobbs

Not full alternator current. Just enough to allow two slightly dissimilar cells in series to charge fully without cooking the better one.

Well, you said you were looking for a small project to see you over Christmas. Design it using an external pass element and jumper selectable voltage so that it can be used for a broad range of battery sizes.

The diagrams that I've seen show a pass element directly across each battery.

Now, I suspect that is just technical shorthand for a linear device biased so that it dissipates stored current from the charged battery, allowing the uncharged battery to match it in a reasonable amount of time.

If Virg's Jag had a 30 A generator driving two 30 Ah 6 V batteries, it would be prudent practice to make sure the pass elements were beefy enough to handle that amount of current with plenty of headroom under the worst-case conditions, IMHO.

Luckily, Jag did a good enough job of matching SoC for both batteries that this balancing circuit was apparently not needed.

--Winston

I recently found out what happened to my 1960 Jaguar:

"More recently, a more advanced Pertronix ignition system has been installed, and the twin 6V batteries have replaced with top of the line Optima units...."

Nice. It's two weeks younger than I am, and I wish I looked that good. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

(...)

Wow! Nice looking car, Virg!

and the twin 6V batteries have replaced

One assumes the batteries they replaced were not >34-year-old factory parts! :)

--Winston