Thread: Battery Charging: Need Help.

So Dave and superquag I have a spare fully charged battery and another charger, 6amp, should I hook the spare in parallel and hook up both chargers to the spare or direct to the blue top.
Or should I take the blue top down to the local auto lecky and have him attack it with his big gun charger.
I am loath to scrap a battery that's only 12 months old (found the purchase date), doubt it would still have warranty though, because of the way it's been treated, Regards Frank.

Id go the warranty route first.

the parrallel charge thing would be next either by means of jumper leads and charger or by putting it in as the second battery in a dual battery setup with a knwocn good cranker.

If that didnt work Id ask the auto leccy to give it some hate with a big old school charger.

Frankly, (sorry, pun just sort of slipped out..)

I'd take the line of least resistance... Your friendly auto-sparky is the easiest and least stressful route, presuming he's got a bigg juicy charger...

2nd suggestion is to use your car as a charger (with a set of jumper leads). This means running it at a fast idle or whatever is needed to get lots of electrons flowing. -Implies you have a suitable multi-meter to monitor the current, which obviously should be above whatever the 6 amp charger produces. And the car sits there making noise/using fuel...

Not a fan of putting 2 chargers in parallel without them being identical and 'Low-Tech'.

Either way, I'd be inclined to connect the 6A unit and sleep on it. - The idea, not the battery...

Dave ?

EDIT: - i type tooo slow.... Agreed, the warranty might surprise you... the worstest that could happen is they say 'no'

Don't have a receipt or even know where it was bought, Regards Frank.

dont worry too much about the current going into an optima, Ive seen them take 100amps for nearly 15 minutes without going sploody. The volts and the temp is key.

Now optima in no way condone this BUT...

you need to strike the balance between blowing off the "contaminated" facing of the plates and killing the battery and its a lot of trial and error. I've never caused more damage to the battery by feeding amps to is so long as Ive kept the voltage under 14v, since most alternators use 13.8 I use that as an indicated limiting factor. The best way Ive found to "blow" the plates clean in an optima is by "shocking" the battery. This involves dumping a mass of current at it for a very short time and then letting it sit for a little bit (15 seconds or so) and repeating the process, eventually the voltage will start to come up. Once the battery voltage starts to come up and is above the nominal "flat voltage" for the battery. lets call that 10.5V take the battery back to flat with a small load (<5a) and start again. you'll hit a "magic" moment when you'll realise that its taking less "shocks" to the battery and longer to discharge. Congratulations put the thing on a constant state charger and see how it goes when its been on charge for long enough to have twice its rated amp hours applied to it (use a constant voltage charger with an open circuit voltage of not more than 13.8V) OR a constant amps charger with a capacity of not more than 1%CCA But you MUST watch the voltage and the temp, if it goes over 50 Degrees or 15.6V you will permanantly kill the battery.

If it shows sign of improvement after that treatement you can go it again but its a game of deminishing returns typically unless you stop the first round of shock treatment too early every time you cycle the battery and shock it back you'll only get back about 1/3rd more than the last time round and if you push too far you can kill the battery outright or shorten its expected life dramatically.

The optima charging cheat sheets for correct normal charging of the battery
The Optima battery charging bible (you only need to read to page 3)

Sorry if I'm hijacking your thread Tank, but rather than start a new thread I thought I'd ask here.
Living off grid I'm trying to get everything to run off 12volts.
I've got 3 Century UPZ series 12volt 100AH lead acid sealed deep cycle batteries that are a bit past their use by date and won't hold a charge any higher than 11.5 volts,Too little to run the TV or laptops but adequate for 12 volt downlights. I tested a Holden Commodore engine cooling fan on one, reading 11.3volts without load, to see how efficient it would be to replace our 240 volt pedestal fans in the cabin. It was still running powerfully after 20 hours ,when the voltage reading when disconnected read 7.5 volts,and the reading after a 24 hour rest is now 9.7volts.
Haven't tried it yet, but my question is, will this battery respond to an alternator charge 55amp? and how long could I expect to keep doing this before the battery is total scrap?
Bill.

thats textbook sulphation...

if its an old school flooded cell battery you'll find that they will probably respond quite well to a zapping with one of these or a similar item.

The next stage of failure likely to be collapsing of the either of the grids (usually the negative) or the eventual removal of all of the reactive material. When that happens you'll have a battery that will provide some volts but almost no amps.

If you can still pull amps from an old school flooded cell battery they can usually be saved dont forget that prior to making an attempt to recover a flooded cell battery you should make sure that its correctly filled isnt showing signs of damage and is electrically isolated from everything else.

the last step in trying to save a battery is to flush it and refil it with fresh acid.

Interesting background Blknight. Thanks

Would be interesting to know if my C-TEK (7 amp) can de-sulphate as well as the JAYCAR kit. Or better (?) About 2 out of 3 'stuffed' batteries zapped by it have come back to lead a productive life, if not their full, potential...