Folks, I bough a manual battery charger. To be honest, i select this one becuase It had a old fashion construction..Is a chinese charger.

The problem I have is that the instructions are really bad.. the translation does not make sense.

So, I have this charger, It has an analog dial, from 0 to 10 and a Letter A (I assume is for amps).

BEseide plugging the cables and turning the machine on, what should I expect with the dail?

To give you an example.

I had a drain, 1000 amp battery. I connect it to the charger, the dial read aournd 4.5-5.0 A in the last 8 hours, the dial has drop to 2.2 A. That does that means? How long should I charge the battery?

Does it means it was taking more amps at the begining and now (hopefully) is has taken some charge, therefore, taking less amps?

When Do I know to stop charging... when it reaches 1 or 0 Amps. I noted that the battery liquids is bubbling?

I know this sound very rookie question, but, honestly, I have no idea.

Throw me a bone!

Thanks

 

It's hard to give exact numbers (depends on mains voltage, charger, & battery) but usually when the current has gone down to and stabilized around 2A, and all cells are bubbling you can consider it fully charged. 4A for 8 hours is 32 Ampere-hours. That's approx half of the capacity of common batteries.
If the battery had been more deeply discharged it would have drawn more than 5A in the beginning.

If the battery had been flat for a week or two you might have seen the current being low in the beginning, then rising to a high level before finally going down again. Then you'd know that the battery had started taking damage from sitting empty.

1000A is the cranking current capability of your battery but it doesn't say too much about how long it takes to charge it, as charging only relates to the Ah's of the battery. In the US you seem to always have been informed only about the CCA number (and it's very important when cranking big engines) whereas in Europe we have a tradition of only considering the Ah. Common battery values are 40-90 Ah, most usual is around 60.

 

THAnks allot for the explation. The battery is a 1000 amp, 800 CCA. The battery was out of service for about 5 months. Disconnected from the poles, and in the car.

 

Glad to be of help.
A battery disharges slowly just sitting by itself. The recomended charging intervals are 4-6 months. The discharge process is slower the colder it is so in the winter you can get away with even longer intervals. It's important however to fully charge the battery before storing it because the car is rarely able to keep the battery more than half-full. It's usually beneficial to disconnect the battery to stop the clock, radio, & other electronics from contributing to the slow self-discharge.