[Oeva-list] Is my lead-acid battery pack dead?

[Tim Kutscha]

Hi All,

  I think I finally killed my first battery pack and would like to hear from
some folks who have been around awhile to confirm if this is true.  Here's
what I've got:

- 8600 miles driven
- typically plugged in twice a day to initiate a charge sequence
- 18 8-v flooded golf cart batteries (USBattery 8VGCHC) (144V pack)
- Zivan NG3 charger

The Zivan charger does bulk charging up to 171.6 volts and then holds that
voltage until the current comes down.  Recently, I've found that the pack
never gets above 170 volts during bulk charge even though the pack is
"boiling" rather vigorously.  Each battery is sitting around 9.4-9.5V during
bulk charge. I wake up in the morning now and find that its 40 degrees outside
but the pack is at 80 degrees due to heat generation from bulk charge.

I've also heard that the Zivan chargers tend to kill battery packs due to over charging.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?  I can still drive around and get to work
but I bet my batteries are going quickly.

Cheers,
Tim

P.S. Anyone interested in a pile of limited capacity 8V flooded batteries for cheap
  in case I need a new pack?  They all seem to have aged equally.