refurbished batteries

[fordman]

does anyone know anythign abotu refurbishing a old car battery? i know some have been doen soem sort of recharging process to and made good again. and it has soemthing to do with how it is recharged. liek puttign in high amps but low current or the other way around. i dont know. i havent learned much about doing it. the last tiem i did a search on the internet. i got garbage. i know this doesnt take anything real special to do. its just how it is wired up and with what kind of charger.

[papabug71]

Only thing I have ever done is put one on a trickle charger overnight. If they are going to come back to life that usually does it. I think a heavy duty charger does what your talking about. It hits the battery with a large amount of amps for just a second, but runs a continuous low amp charge.

Most batteries these days dont like to be charged on a charger. It will usually burn up a cell. At least the ones Ive had to mess with.

[FreakysFords]

top off cells with distilled water (NOT TAP).
Use charger's lowest setting.
Bring it up and then let it sit for a couple hours after it's taken all the charge it wants.
Discharge with a headlamp or two (parallel, not series) till it's well and truly dead.
Let sit for a few hours and then charge again as before.


IF it's going to come back, that'll do it. (trickle chargers are good for this if they are full duty cycle and not just "top off")

[fordman]

is that how the battery reconditioning places do it? i thought they charged them differently. than a regular charger is what the guy who used to do it told me.

[FreakysFords]

No, it's not quite how they do it. I help out our local battery refurb guy from time to time (he's not in the best health). The system he uses is the same setup (though different look and brand) as what the other 2 shops I know of use. It's a charge/discharge/charge setup. Growing up dirt poor, we used the method I mentioned earlier and I still use it. The only difference is that in some cases I flush them and use fresh acid, but in those cases I do it at the local shop where he's got the means to deal with the acid and the equipment to do it safely.

Frank

[70_F100]

Amps = Current.

[stephen44]

Remove the battery as you would to charge it. Before charging, drain the fluid from the battery and replace it with a mixture of 12-15 percent magnesium sulfate (better known as Epsom salts) distilled water. Then recharge the battery. It should resume normal function, although you may have to recharge it a couple of times to bring it back to full storage capacity.

My trickle "tender" charger also has a de-sulpur- setting i can switch it to that is supposed to do the same.
back in the UK - we used to drop Alka-Seltzer into the cells to achieve the same.

just my - Stephen

[fordman]

i charged it 3 tiems at 1 hour each i now have it back to 10 volts. i guess it isd tiem to drain it completely and recharge. i do have new acid. but i don't want to dump it yet. i had considered tapping the battery on the floor before i drained it . if i do drain it. just to clean the plates off before the new acid.

[knightfire83]

Curious to know what is the proper procedure for disposing of sulfuric (battery) acid? I have about a 1/4 bottle of it left over from a new motorcycle battery that I need to get rid of...

Neutralize it with baking soda and water?

[fordman]

water will thin it out for sure. i dont know if thats proper but i know it will dilute it to nothing if you add enough water.

[cdeal28078]

I always figured a dead battery had something in between 2 or more cells shorting them out. I would think on some batteries at least you would need to be able to clean out between the cells, add new acid and then charge it up.
clint

[fordman]

well i fianlly got the tops opened up. and the two ends cells were pretty dry looking. i filled them up and got all of them level with acid. i then cooked it again for another hour. it has 11 volts not and the battery is warm. i turned it on for another hour and came in the house. that might be all this battery will do but we will see come morning.

[QC]

It takes hours to recharge a battery that is deeply discharged. The more cranking amps it has the longer it takes. A 700 CCA battery that is below 12 volts would take at least 6 hours at 5 amps to recharge. If its drained down to 6 volts it will probably take 18-24 hours at 5 amps to be completely charged.
A battery will have a surface charge after a couple hours on a charger,but it will not stay. It will be dead again in a couple days.
If a wet battery has sat dead (below 12 volts) for any length of time it will be permananly damaged. The plates turn to mush and nothing you can do will save it.

[fordman]

i know what you are saying. and i had ti up to 8 volts after i recharged the pee out of it and let it sit for several days with no charge. i dont know if this battery is goignt o make it or not but i did want to try and save it if i could.

[AlleyCat]

Curious to know what is the proper procedure for disposing of sulfuric (battery) acid? I have about a 1/4 bottle of it left over from a new motorcycle battery that I need to get rid of...

Neutralize it with baking soda and water?

Yes that would work.

BTW, it also makes great drain cleaner. Back when I worked in gas stations and you had to deal with a clogged floor drain it was common practice to dump all of the acid from every scrap battery you could find down the offending drain. Worked great.