Ok this is probably going to be a really dumb question or two

WillsC said:

Guyfang,

No harm done. I do truly appreciate all of the guidance and help you freely provide here and I very much like your stories of service life. My favorite by the way was the one about the guy being .

Wills

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Guyfang, "catapulted by the trailer missing the kickstand" ? Can you tell me?

Not a problem Chris. Next time you are here, or I am in Berlin. The story is even better when you can tell it with hand movements and such. Even the thought of it makes me crack up!

tennmogger said:

The Solargizers work a little differently from what you might think. They require battery voltage to operate their electroncs! So, that 24 v unit might not work on a 12v battery (what you are doing if the solargizer is hooked up to only one 12v battery). Or, you could have a bad Solargizer. I have found dead ones.

The solar panel puts out only around 6 volts, as I recall, and the electronics build a charge then discharge across the battery, raising the battery voltage with a high voltage spike added to the battery voltage. That's probably what your voltmeter is seeing. Modern voltmeters tend to be peak-readers on short pulses.

Not much energy is transferred from the Solargizer to the battery so almost zip net charging takes place. The purpose is to break up sulfation.

Somewhere on here is a description of some testing I did years ago, o'scope and all, but I don't find it.

[the above is a SWAG based on actual testing. It's my opinion and I'm sticking to it ]

Found the earlier post: Good info on Solargizers: https://www.steelsoldiers.com/showthread.php?10126-Solargizer/page6

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I honestly don't know, all I do know is she no blinkie so it is not working correctly. You could very well be right that being hooked up to 12V for who knows how long killed it. But I can use a meter. The solar panel itself in our bright FL sun was putting out 30V so I know the solar panel works. The literature on it states the solar panel puts out 28V so that is close. That same company makes two versions of the units. One only de-sulphates the battery and the other is supposed to charge and de-sulphate. I ordered a new solar maintainer controller so will hook that up to the panel when it arrives.

The deoxit came today so going to go soak those switches down and see if I can get the load meter to work which is my only other burr under the blanket. There just seems something WRONG with soaking electrical devices in a liquid

WillsC said:

The deoxit came today so going to go soak those switches down and see if I can get the load meter to work which is my only other burr under the blanket. There just seems something WRONG with soaking electrical devices in a liquid

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A "now funny story" that causes me to relate to that feeling... My 2000 watt Espresso machine with its 6 liter boiler has a Sirai pressure stat device that regulates the pressure within the boiler. Well it was acting up and not coming up to full pressure. So I took the cover off the machine to view the pressure stat and noticed that the cut-in and cut-out pressure could be adjusted. So I did some adjustments to bring up the pressure. Well that didn't help much so I removed the cover from the pressure stat and noticed it had AC contact points within the pressure activated switch that were very pitted from use. Since they appeared similar to points on an old car distributor I got out my trusty points file and carefully filed down the pits and sprayed some Deoxit "liberally" on the points to remove any residue. Put it together and readjusted the pressure cut-in & cut-out right on the money and it seemed to now work great.

The next day I was sitting down in the living room watching TV enjoying a freshly made latte and all of a sudden heard a loud instantaneous whoosh sound that sounded like someone dropping a frozen turkey into a kettle of boiling grease! It was so loud I jumped out of my seat and rushed over to the kitchen to see a plume of steam rising up to the kitchen ceiling out of the top of my beloved espresso machine. I immediately shut it down and later determined that the over pressure valve on the boiler did its job and had released a build up of excessive pressure. I did a postmortem and discovered that the pressure stat points had stuck together from what appeared to be carbonized residue on the points (excess drips of Deoxit on points?). Anyway, I ordered a new pressure stat and never dared spray anything on them again and its all going good now 4 yrs later.

Coincidentally, I later read about a similar model Elektra espresso machine that had its boiler explode in a restaurant in Europe that was so violent they had to send in the bomb squad initially to determine if it was a bomb, but later determined the origin to be a boiler explosion in the espresso machine and did an investigation to determine if the machine had been sabotaged (the over pressure valve failed to open). Luckily no one was sitting nearby when it happened as it blew up the surrounding area it was located in. Anyway, I now only buy new OEM pressure stat's and never try to repair them myself...lol

So now I use contact cleaner very sparingly, especially on any switches with "points like" contacts that carry high current as opposed to wiper switches, and make sure they are not left dripping wet because I'm still gun-shy after my seemingly near death espresso machine experience using Deoxit.

Now back to your regular scheduled generator program discussing the "soaking" of electrical switches with Deoxit.