minn- Kota battery charge checker?.

["COMA"]

I recently purchased a small hand held minn kota battery condition checker.
It is very small and has two prongs that you hold onto the positive and
negative posts on your battery. Then led lights light up indicating 1/3, 2/3,
0r 100%. My question is if it reads 100% is my battery fully charged or is it
just putting out 100% of its voltage.?The reason I ask is I used the electric
for about five hours this weekend . I then put it on the charger for about
two and a half hours. I then went out and disconected the charger and
checked it with the minn- kota condition checker and it say's 100%. Is it
fully charged that quik?. I'm useing a 12 volt 6 amp charger. I know I need a
more amp charger like a 10 or 20 but have not got around to picking one up.
"COMA"

[Smurf]

Probably is not fully charged. Your meter is reading what is called a "surface charge". The only way to get a true reading is to put a load on the battery for a while and then test again. You can run some of your electronics for a while to remove the surface charge. I use a trolling motor on a canoe, so my boat is totally disassembled when I charge my battery. Could someone please tell me a simple way for me to remove my surface charge? I'm hoping someone can help, because I'm always wondering about my charge, too.

[TerryMac]

Ditto to Smurf. Good post.

[Ed M]

This is the best write-up I've seen on the subject:

http://nyquist.ee.ualberta.ca/~schmaus/dcbat.html

["COMA"]

Thanks Ed !. I think I have every thing I could ask for with that post. Did not realize there was so much to this battery buisness. :-) I have a good grasp on it now. Thank you, "COMA"