On Wed, 7 Jul 1999, Amatruda, Andy wrote:
> I went to fire up the 4A for the first time since the rebuild. In
> preparation I put the relatively new Die Hard on the charger and found it
> barely able to take a charge. It's 3 years old, but has been sitting idle
> for 2 during the rebuild (no trickle charge). After about 5 hours I did
> get it to register on the charger and it had enough power to start the car
> with some additional boosting. It still does not register as being fully
> charged on the charger meter. I seem to recall that batteries that sit for
> a while can get "sulfated" and there is a procedure to reverse the process.
> I think you need a BIG charger, not the 10 amp thing I have. Can someone
> confirm if this is true and if a Gas Station size charger can fix this.
The problem sometimes is oxidization of the lead plates inside the
battery.
If you can, open up the cells and take a look inside. If the cells have a
signifigant amount of electrolyte (ACID!) missing, you'll need to either
add electrolyte or add (distilled, clean) water.
You should be able to get electrolyte from the auto parts store, it's not
very expensive but they don't give you anything to carry it in (hint:
don't take a brown paper bag). Perhaps taking your battery in will
suffice, and they'll fill it for you.
If the battery is full, then you could still have scale on the battery
plates. Charging the battery releases hydrogen, and it may be possible to
'boil off' any crud on the plates by charging the battery at a higher
rate. YMMV. This procdure has never worked for me. However, we drive
our cars so much that a replacement battery is viewed as a routine
maintenance thing- when it can no longer start the car, it gets replaced.
There also is a magic potion you can buy that's supposed to cure all that
ails a dead battery. Might work in your case (costs around $5), check out
thte snake-oil rack at your local auto parts store. It's some sort of
'battery reviver', you pour it into the cells of a dead battery then
charge it and it magically descales everything. (I tried it on a batt.
that had been fine 5 years ago but had just sat in the time between, tried
this stuff, no results)
-Malcolm (About to go on another 80 mile top-down cruise)
* There is a FAQ for this list! Its new home is:
http://www.islandnet.com/~walker05/triumph/trfaq.htm
|