How does this product not damage the car's electronics?

[4flyer]

https://voltageboosterpro.com/product/og/

Despite the horrendous pricing, I have a question about this product. It goes inline with the alternator sense fuse to trick the alternator into boosting the output voltage for AGM batteries. Simple. Makes sense.

Now, at cold idle, a car (at least my 2001 toyota) will output 14.3-14.5v. After warming up, it goes down to ~13.4v. This product will boost those voltages by either 0.5v or 1.0v depending on setting.

Now, at cold idle, with a 1V boost, wouldn't make the battery charge at 15.3-15.5v? Does the vehicle have a way to clamp down on that? At that voltage, many DC powered devices are in danger. For example, my ham radio is rated at 13.8 +/- 15%, or ~15.8V max. That is not much margin.

Thoughts?

[Benta]

Why, oh why do US people keep falling for this kind of snake oil?
Something seems to have gone wrong with the education system.

[T3sl4co1l]

How would it?

Automotive electronics are designed for 13.8V nominal, with sustained peaks from -12V (12V crossed jumpstart) to 24V (24V jumpstart), and including load dump (some 100s ms pulse, 40-60V peak depending on alternator type).  And higher transients (up to a couple hundred volts) for shorter pulse lengths at higher impedances.

Aftermarket junk, who knows, but even there, I would be shocked to find something that can't handle 16V or so.

Tim

[floobydust]

Automotive charging systems can go up to 16V in very cold weather. That isn't high as far as the electronics goes, nothing gets damaged.

USD $85 for a couple 6A10 diodes and a switch? It looks like just an extra diode voltage drop or two added to the SENSE line.
Modern ECU's control alternator voltage, you can set battery chemistry in the ECU as well.

[DavidKo]

There are several voltages at which the devices should work without loss of performance (depends on car manufacturer) cca 7-18V is common for cars with start stop systems. Than there is higher voltage which the device should withstand without issues for example 28V, but in such a case the device can be switch off to prevent its damage since. Last thing is compatibility with short high voltage pulses.

[Dan123456]

Nope, cars don’t really have a secondary way of regulating voltage (at least not that I can remember from when I was a mechanic).

The alternator has the voltage regulator on the back of it.

This is because the alternator is the cars main electrical power source when it is running (the battery is pretty much just there to start the car and provide a little extra juice under heavy loads - hence why you can often jump start a car with no battery in it and then still drive it around like nothing is wrong) 

As the alternator spins at different speeds with the engine (as they are connected with a belt), you don’t want the voltage to change too much through the engines rev range 

For instance, if you didn’t have a voltage reg, the alternator might only produce say 5V at idle but might spit out 18V at max RPM (compared to ~13.5-14.5V at all times from a healthy alternator)

All that said, I’m not sure if the ECU and other electronic controllers have their own voltage regs inside as we just considered the “box” a complete unit to remove and replace and maybe things have changed since I left the industry since cars are becoming full of more and more electronics 

[coromonadalix]

total uther crap   and could be even dangerous for your car system

people fall for this gimmick anyways ... and some garage void parts warranties when they see theses ...

[Berni]

The alternator is the regulation.

Small piece of electronics on the back of the alternator adjusts the field windings on the rotor to always create the desired voltage regardless of the engine RPM. All that this mod does is reduce the voltage coming on the sense wire slightly, so that the electronics raise the output voltage.

Automotive electronics are designed to survive things WAY worse than this, so they won't even notice an extra volt or two. They specifically test it for a so called "load dump" scenario that represents the battery being disconnected while the alternator is under heavy load. This causes the regulation to loose it and put as much as 60V into the fuse box for a short moment. Car batteries die all the time as they age over many years, and this can cause unstable voltage, so it is far from rare for the voltage in cars to swing pretty far from the nominal values.

The electronics in cars has to be made robust, they can't afford to have the electronics in cars die from a brief power surge. There are a lot of cars out there so even if such a killer surge happened to a tiny fraction of a % of cars that is a lot of broken cars.

That being said, such a high voltage sounds kinda high to me for any kind of lead acid battery type. Id only recommend running batteries this high once in every few months to clean the plates of sulfate.

[tooki]

Why, oh why do US people keep falling for this kind of snake oil?
Something seems to have gone wrong with the education system.

Let’s avoid the attacks on entire nationalities, ok?

People all over the world — including Switzerland and Germany — fall prey to scams and scam products all the time, too. (*cough* homeopathy *cough*) Nothing about that is specific to the US.

Other scam automotive products are common enough in Germany that ADAC released warnings about them: https://www.adac.de/rund-ums-fahrzeug/ausstattung-technik-zubehoer/zubehoer/spritsparmittel-im-test/

We, as electronics folks, can easily identify this as nonsense. But most people, regardless of country, know little to nothing about electricity and electronics, and thus are not equipped to identify this particular scam.

[darkspr1te]

I might be wrong but i though the whole power monitoring system was fuel saving , at least thats how toyota/honda japan docs show it. between the 2006-2007 rav4 they show that just having the excitement charge going even though the output regulator is burning off the power as the battery is full and between the ECU and brake light the user is not using power. so just keeping the alternator powered up was wasting fuel and making it electronic didnt really change the price of the system overall(market speak for it saves YOU money later !!) .  I think same went for the power steering and AC, they all became 'controlled' and in some cases its a good thing, there is a aus fellow who did the toyota prius electric power steering on his 16B suzuki vitara and it's his daily and he mentions he visits the gas station 3 days after normal, having the same car i can imagine that my power steering pump saps power just to go through the pressure valve when driving straight.
These are actually mods I am considering for my Vitara as it ages, mainly as these parts are now the norm.

*edit* not talking about the scam electronics per say, but the current reduce power systems now from OEM now as apposed to alternate "battery boost" systems or power save ideas from other territories 


darkspr1te

[ejeffrey]

Any automotive electronics that can be destroyed by 16 V deserves to be destroyed by 16V. 

[DavidAlfa]

Recently a friend's car alternator failed and started oscillating between 12 and 16.6V, no problem with electronics except funny constantly dimming lights, behaving like a 0.5Hz PWM ramp.
While the new one was coming, it started failing more, reaching 17V, there electronics started to freak out, triggering random ABS braking, very unsafe as it would randomly lock any wheel, guess the fun at 100mph while raining!
The car was parked and not driven again until I replaced the alternator, everything was fine afterwards.

Automotive electronics are extremely tough, most will tolerate continuous 18V, enter some sort of protection / turning theirselves off over ~20V, withstanding maybe 40V in that condition.

[Siwastaja]

Why, oh why do US people keep falling for this kind of snake oil?
Something seems to have gone wrong with the education system.

Excuse me, can you elaborate how you would expect any primary education system, anywhere, teach students about the delicate differences between lead acid chemistry charge voltages? Because that's literally what that product claims to do, increase the voltage of existing charging circuit so that a standard lead acid battery can be replaced with an AGM type, which, and this is their claim, requires higher voltage. Now the claim that AGM lead acid requires higher charge voltage seems totally plausible. I'm a battery expert of some sort myself and can accept this claim; I don't actually remember if this is true or not; lead acid charge voltage is all over the place with temperature compensation, equalization (balancing) phase, at least four different battery types (those where you add water / valve regulated / gel / AGM) and whatever. It is well possible that an aftermarket voltage converter reduces battery sulfation by offering more correct, for the chemistry, charging voltage, especially when the battery type is replaced with something the original charger was not intended to charge.

The real question is, what is wrong with German education system? Does it not teach you to read the damn thing before replying, and not replying at all if you have nothing to say?