Battery Load Tester HF

Lot no 90636 $18. They say 100 amp 6 and 12 volt.

snipped-for-privacy@nosam.org wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

The best battery load tester available is your own dome light and starter.

What do you want to test it for? Leaks? Coolant strength?

Pressure and leaks that result from road and corrosion problems.

The coolant level will tell you all these things. If you are loosing coolant, you have a leak. If you have a leak then either you will have low or high pressure, high if it's a head gasket that's leaking from the combustion chamber into the water jacket.

Jack

Why spend any money, you have a load tester. Turn on your headlights and watch the battery voltage. A good battery should be able to power your headlights for 1/2 hour before the voltage drops below 11 volts. Don't discharge the battery below 11 volts, you risk damaging a cell by reverse charging it. You might want to have a battery charger handy incase you can't start the car after the test.

You might also consider the fact that you can't do a load test on a battery that isn't charged.

Jack

I'm pretty sure that the Harbor Freight battery load tester would work, however, I doubt if it would get much use. I got mine from my dad, and as far as I know, it hasn't been used in 40+ years, and that is with me fixing most of my friends' cars. A volt meter, the car's headlights, and the age of the battery are what I use when deciding whether or not to replace a battery.

Most places that sell batteries will load test your battery for free.

Radiator testers usually come in kits so you can check the cap and pressurize the radiator. Caps are inexpensive enough that when in doubt, I just recommend replacing it, especially if it is over 10 years old. I am not a fan of pressure testing old radiators because the pressure test itself can make an old radiator leak because the pressure test can be more than the pressure developed by the cooling system. Bottom line, a cooling system tester is probably not worth the money unless you intend to work on a lot of old cars.

So one does not need to remove the battery? Autozone here I cum.

I have one of those kits BIG $$$ (about $150 15 years ago). It saved my behind several times prior to trips. Without such a tester it is tough if not impossible to find small leaks that can be a disaster at high temperature or altitude. I take it that the Sienna

06 cap is a 'mini' pressure cap. Is this one standard size for all T? What psi or equivalent do they typically use - guess it is metric? Just driving in flat land around town - one can safely do without it.

If I purchased a cap and modified it to take a hose - then there would still be a problem of testing the cap. m

Nope!

There will be a specification published in the factory service manual for opening pressure, typically 12 to 16 PSI. On the suction side, it should suck the coolant from the overflow bottle when a vacuum is applied. The cooling system should hold around 18 PSI.

The cooling system testers that the dealers have to purchase include adapters for all of the radiator neck and cap sizes.

I have one (not sure if it's the exact same one...) used it a few times - it's useful as an easy "Go/No Go" test of the battery, don't expect any precision out of it.

When I used it, I hooked up my known accurate Fluke DVM across the battery posts to make sure I was getting an accurate voltage reading out of the HF tester, and the mechanical gauge movement was close enough for gummint work.

I'm still in the "When in doubt, get a new battery - they're both perishable and relatively cheap" school, but it's nice to know it's really bad before you condemn it.

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CUM? He said CUM!!!!

Is anything HF sells any good?

Yes, sort of. The HF tool claims to be a 100 amp load. If your battery were for example a 600 CCA battery, the proper load test would be 300 amps (CCA X .5 or amp hour X3) for 15 seconds, battery voltage not to drop below 9.6 volts during load. Since the HF tool only applies a 100 amp load, you'd need to increase the load test time from 15 seconds to 45 seconds to obtain the same results as a real carbon pile that can apply a

300 amp load. Headlamps that draw 10 amps left on for 450 seconds would achieve the same results also.

Transconductance testers are much more accurate and capable of finding a battery with potential problems, they also have the advantage that the battery needn't be fully charged to obtain accurate results.

Yes. Snap-On, Mac, Matco, Cornwall and many on-line tool vendors sell the correct adaptor. Price; I'd guess between $30 and $50 There are threaded styles and bayonet styles so choose carefully.

I bought a Harbor Freight's Pittsburgh brand pry bar set, and I have been pleasantly surprised. I don't know if I would purchase something that requires precision, but for simple tools, they seem to be fine.

I also bought Harbor Freight hammers to take camping to pound tent stakes and lift Dutch oven lids. The Scouts I take camping have figured out a way to make hammers vaporize, so I'd rather loose a $3 HF hammer than a $30 Estwing.

I consider HF tools to be good enough for a job where I'll probably only use the tool occasionally.