Battery charger - charging voltage?

[mankymusic]

I've been having having trouble with my battery in the cold weather so I thought I'd take it in for the night and give it a charge. I've got a "Ring Smartcharge8" which has a display on it telling you the voltage and the current. When the charger is doing the constant current charge it fixes the current to what ever it is set to (in this case 2A) and in theory raises the voltage.

So, my battery is bubbling away like cheap lemonade and the charger says its putting in 14.4v and 2A, I decided to check this with a multimeter, the voltage across the battery was actually 16v, I'm starting to doubt myself but surely this isn't right is it?

I would have thought that the charger would charge the battery to around 14.4v and then knock in to trickle charge mode?

what's the general opinion? stuffed charger?
I know I've probably got a stuffed battery now, b@st@rd!

[Oldiebut goodie]

I've got two Ring chargers - they both do the same, around 16v. A bit disconcerting but the batteries have suffered no ill effects.

[mankymusic]

So I got in touch with Ring and explained how I put a battery on charge and it charged up to 16v before coming up with an "F01" error, here is a copy of the correspondence :
ring -

The fault code F01 will appear on the display if the battery is heavily sulphated and the charger has been unable to reduce the sulphation. How old is your Smartcharger? If you want to return it to “Technical Support” at the address below we will test it for you and if necessary replace it, free of charge.

me -

Thank you for your reply, so you are telling be that the F01 error is nothing to really worry about and that it is normal for the charger to charge at 16v? 16 volts seems rather high to me.
My smartcharge was bought in 2009, if you think that it is possibly faulty then I will return it but if what I have told you is normal behaviour and nothing to worry about then there seems little point.

ring -

The charger should cut off and stop charging at 14.4 volts and not carry on to 16.0volt. This indicates a faulty charger. Please accept our goodwill gesture and return it to Technical Support.

popped my charger in the post, 3 days later a nice shiny new one arrives

just tested the new one and it seems to be behaving as it should - charges at full current up to 14.5 then reduces the current accordingly before switching to float charge.

fair play to Ring, great customer support!

[Oldiebut goodie]

Very interesting - I checked another Ring one the other day - it was exactly the same - 16v!! It appears to happen when the battery is either very flat or sulphated, they appear to get confused. If they are disconnected when they do this then reconnected they appear to behave normally. So there must be something basically awry with their chargers.