New battery or worse?

ok as it is related to batterys and chargers ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, how do you know/test if a car 12v battery charger is working? if you put a volt meter across the Positive and Neg leads would you get a 13/14 odd volt reading? or no reading, as the charger only charges when it senses a load?

 

A voltmeter should read a minimum of 12.2 across a fully charged good condition battery. Start engine and you should get a reading 0f 13 to 14.5. The use of the battery to start the engine, will create the need for regulator to allow the battery to charge, if your still not sure turn the headlights on.
To further confuse the situation a friend had a Fireblade that would occasionally fail to start always due to a flat battery, sometimes when left overnight sometimes when left for short periods of 5 mins to an hour, that showed 14.2/14.4 volts when running, two batteries , an exchange reg/rec and vast amounts of hair pulling later the Generator was found to only fail when the engine got hot!!!

 

Rob, that was not the ? I asked, I know how to test a battery if charging on bike etc, my ? was related to 12 car charger, I have answered my own ? I took it apart, annoying that the cover was pop riveted on, but once instead, the whole loom was burnt, and disintegrated, and basically it is fooked, so new charger needed

 

well you have answered yourself brett lol, but yes you should have seen a higher voltage present... 12v batteries need a good 13v or more to charge up, generally smart chargers drop the current being supplied as the voltage of the battery increases, some of the better ones have inbuilt circuits which will detect resistance and load etc and apply a pulsing pattern of charge to it, but you would hopefully see something , even if you had to hook up the multimeter to it for 10-15 mins.

 

I'm happy to report it was only the aged battery that let my beloved (bike not wife!) down.

Reading 12.8 idle and 13.8 active, lights on @ 5000rpm. Raptor workshop manual advises not less than 13.3 and not greater than 14.3, so how much more in the middle can you get than 13.8?
Thanks for all your comments.