If you or someone in your family is dependent upon their powered Invacare Pronto wheelchair to provide their mobility, the last thing you want is to be concerned about how far and how long the battery may perform.
First, let me say that batteries for wheelchairs are resilient, reliable and maintenance free. But maintenance free does not mean that these battery packs do not gradually deteriorate.
Failure of a battery pack in your Invacare Pronto wheelchair has two likely symptoms:
1. A sudden and dramatic reduction of range, sometimes immediately resulting in a sudden failure to move and the Fully Charged indicator may not show a correct recharge even after 24 hours of charging the battery pack. This indicates that you will need an immediate replacement of your Battery pack.
or
2. You may notice that after using the Invacare Pronto scooter, you reach the yellow or the red warning areas of your power indicator earlier than you used to reach it. If this is the case your batteries may be showing signs of the gradual decrease in capacity. Or range.. Though this is not as likely to leave you stranded, it will not get better with time.
One other thing to consider is that battery capacity (run time) decreased when operating your Pronto Wheelchair outside, in cold weather Fresh batteries will do better than older, somewhat spent packs, but all batteries will perform less well in the cold.
The changing of your batteries need not require a service shop. As much as 0 can be saved if you do this yourself. A family member or handyman can do this in a few minutes. It is no more difficult than replacing a car's battery.
Questions to ask anyone selling you a new set of batteries include asking the freshness of the batteries. You do not want batteries that have been sitting around and have not been sold quickly. Small shops can sell you a new battery with much of its life expired on their shelves. Sealed Lead Acid batteries do not create an electrical charge, they are only a storage battery. You will never get back as much energy as you put into it, and over time, the internal resistance will diminish the charge.
Another question is to be sure that your dealer has a technician that you can talk to, not just a sales clerk. You want to be sure that the correct pack is shipped the first time, since shipping costs are important to your total cost.
The batteries need to be charged from time to time, even if the Power Chair or Scooter are not in use. Failure to top off the charge on the wheelchair batteries between uses or every few weeks when not in use will significantly reduce the remaining service life of the battery pack.
Likewise, storing the batteries in areas that allow them to drop below 50 degrees F should be avoided. But you can use the powered medical mobility chair or scooter in weather colder tnan that. Just try to charge it up and store it in a climate controlled space.
I hope these few ideas will help protect your investment in the chair and the batteries that motivate it.
Happy Trails!
copyright 2011 Jim W. Bennett
