Reviving a 12 Volt Lead Acid Automotive Battery

[greaseyfingers]

has anyone had any success in reviving sulfated 12 volt lead acid automotive batteries that won't take or hold charge from using a battery charger..

do those desulphating battery chargers, they advertise and sell, work very well for desulphating a battery, so a dead battery can be efficiently charged to operational use, again..

also, will using a tablespoon of epsom salt, work for adding to all of the battery's individual dead cells, for trying to revive it, before, the battery is connected to a battery charger for trying to get the battery to take and hold a charge, again..

 

[Mark_88]

If you're talking about the older style that have serviceable ports, my Dad used to revive them by adding distilled water to them and then charging them with a trickle charger...but once the core is used up the battery is toast...

Haven't seen one of those batteries around for probably 30 years...all the new ones you cannot remove the caps and, as far as I know, it's not recommended...

 

[LearjetMinako]

You don't want to add anything but distilled water. Once a battery has internal corrision on the plates, its pretty much dead.

 

[Will]

He's talking about forcing the deposits off the plates by heavy charging.

I've tried it. I have an old uncontrolled charger and it will boil a battery. I left one on it for two days, refilling it. All it did was be hot and gas like crazy. Maybe a special charger would work. It's better to keep a battery in shape and not let them get that way. I have trickle charges on equipment that sits.

 

[Rico]

The lead battery works on a simple chemical reaction of lead and sulfuric acid which produce electricity and sulfate. That's in a perfect world where the chemical reaction is 100% and there is definitely no such thing as 100% in terms of reactions. There is always something that will turn into something else and a reaction of 50%(and even 1%) is deemed a successful reaction in chemistry.
So reviving a lead cell battery is next to impossible even if you have what on paper seems to be good but it is more than likely won't work.

You can physically see what I'm talking about if you've ever seen corrosion on battery terminals before. Ideally the only color you should be seeing is yellow but there's usually blue, green, or white colors there also which is evidence that chemically reactions don't work with 100% accuracy.

 

[Nipplechops]

Most of those desulphating chargers use high current, half square wave pulses to try and forcibly dissolve the crystalized lead sulphate accumulated on the cell plates. They can be successful if the sulphation is minimal, but if the battery has been sitting in a sulphated state for any length of time, you won't revive it.

Best to get a replacement. Even if the desulphation is successful, the battery will not be good as new again.

 

[COPPERHEAD85]

what they said...............get a new one.

 

[ForOffRoadDriving]

yeah, if this is not just a "project" then replace it with a new one. we have a reconditioning mode on our charger at work that is supposed to desulfate the batteries and it does work, but as said before it doesnt bring them back to full capacity. I took in a motorcraft 65-850 that was only 2 years old on a core exchange and it matched the other battery i have in my project truck so i decided to try to revive it. when i first tested it it had 100cca and only 8.7 volts, which made me think it was shorted out or had a dead cell, but the tester told me to charge it so i gave it a try. i checked the fluid level and it was 1/2 way down so i filled it with some acid left over from a battery fill kit. i put it on the recondition mode and left it for 24 hours and when i came back the next day it was fully charged. i tested it again and it had 12.9 volts and 400 cranking amps. so it came back about half way, which isnt enough to be trusted as a primary battery.