Charging the 12v battery in the hybrid

[Ozarkbeard]

Until Ford fixes their charging parameters or whatever I will just try to put my noco 5g on the battery for a week or so every 4-6 months.

That's what I've been doing on my '23 XL that took 13 months from order to delivery - and a month of that was in transit from Hermosillo.

I attach the NOCO to the quick-connect plug I installed at the Jump points under the hood. But I use it much more frequently than you do. And the charger sometimes goes into de-sulfation mode after charging is complete. I have doubts it'll make it two years w/o maintenance charging.

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[ZABSMAV]

That's what I've been doing on my '23 XL that took 13 months from order to delivery - and a month of that was in transit from Hermosillo.

I attach the NOCO to the quick-connect plug I installed at the Jump points under the hood. But I use it much more frequently than you do. And the charger sometimes goes into de-sulfation mode after charging is complete, even though I keep it topped off more often than I do. I have doubts it'll make it two years w/o maintenance.

Once a battery is sulfated, it is damaged. A charger may claim to do something to correct that damage, but in reality it cannot. The only real solution is to properly recharge the battery from the very beginning. Therein is the problem with the poorly designed charging circuit that is present in the Ford Maverick hybrid models. By it's design, it leads to the permanent damage of the 12v battery.

 

[MakinDoForNow]

That's what I've been doing on my '23 XL that took 13 months from order to delivery - and a month of that was in transit from Hermosillo.

I attach the NOCO to the quick-connect plug I installed at the Jump points under the hood. But I use it much more frequently than you do. And the charger sometimes goes into de-sulfation mode after charging is complete, even though I keep it topped off more often than I do. I have doubts it'll make it two years w/o maintenance.

Yep it has to be desulfated. I was unclear in what I said the 4-6 months was a minimum where I leave it on for a minimum of a solid week (I just finished a trip out of town and it was on for just over 3 weeks solid, which seemed to help a lot). I did have a small 25ah AGM in my side x side which was dead flat, supposedly death for agm. Put noco 5g on it and it worked on it for six weeks before not going into optimization immediately. Got over 2 years on it but it died last week so going to replace this time.).. I do put my noco on for 1-2 days anytime my dome light does not come on. I have never used the Repair function on my noco because battery has to be disconnected from truck due to the high voltage (20+?) possibly hurting truck.

 

[Ozarkbeard]

...I do put my noco on for 1-2 days anytime my dome light does not come on...

Fortunately, I have never had the dome light not come on.

 

[HeyBales]

Log files say it seems to be happy 60-65% as a goal.
Or less.

Only seen 80% after a full charging one evening where charger said 100%, took it off charger and it sat overnight for relearn process.
By morning the BMS system reported about 77% - on the drive it got to 80%, but my trip was over.
And that was the last time it saw above 65%.

The DCDC Conv doesn't seem to stop charging.
After a couple minutes max it drops from 8-10 Amps to 4-6 Amps topping charge.
After a few more minutes it drops to 1-2 Amps float charge.
After some minutes there it bounces between 0 & 1, because it doesn't give 0.5 figure, I'm guessing that's about it.

https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-403-charging-lead-acid

 

[Frenchy]

Therein lies the problem. It's the charging circuit that is killing the 12v battery in a hybrid because of the way the "engineers" designed the way it recharges that battery. It never fully recharges the battery. Do a little research and you will find that if you do not rapidly fully recharge a lead-acid battery (be it a flooded or AGM type) it will become sulfated. Ince sulfated, it is essentially destroyed and will be incapable of providing sufficient current to the loads laced on it and the voltage will rapidly drop. You described exactly this problem.

So what is the solution?

 

[ZABSMAV]

So what is the solution?

Supposedly, according to Ford, they are modifying the charging circuit and should release a recall notice before the end of March. If I had the answer, I would expect that Ford would want to hire and pay me. They have had engineers there at Ford and the Maverick has had this serious problem since the first Maverick Hybrid rolled off the assembly line. You think that competent engineers would have solved this problem by now, considering this is into the 2025 model year? I'll leave the interpretation of that question to your own imagination.

 

[Glen Baker LLC]

Fortunately, I have never had the dome light not come on.

A few instances in September, I had the interior lights not come on.
At that point, I installed a charger.

I ran the cables directly to the battery terminals. I charged the battery overnight. The next day, I pulled fuse 11/12 and did the battery relearn. I turned off as much communications as I could. That means no Ford Pass for me.
I haven't had a problem since. The charger leads are still directly hooked up to the terminals.
Anecdotal at best but it has worked for me.

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