crankshaftdan II
Well-known member
Anyone had any luck with these state of the art recovery chargers? Do they really extend the life of dead/dying batteries? Worth the $$$ or just a glorified charger? Thanks
Battery/charger/desulphernator
- Thread starter crankshaftdan II
- Start date
Nocturnal-G
Well-known member
I can suggest CTEK, they work well. I just picked up a CTEK 3300 for basic charging... I suggest you get one of the better 8 step ones. They would work better and can charge a completely dead battery. The 3300 I have can charge a battery that's down to 1.5 volts I believe. Good luck!
theoldwizard1
Well-known member
^^^^^^^^Anyone had any luck with these state of the art recovery chargers? Do they really extend the life of dead/dying batteries? Worth the $$$ or just a glorified charger? Thanks
That is my opinion.
theoldwizard1
Well-known member
Yeah, but will a battery that on charge actually accept and hold a charge ?
Once you are down to about 9 volts, I don't think it will ever come back, unless perhaps if it is a deep discharge battery.
MBfreak
MEMBER EMERITUS
I learned a trick by a Mandingo car mechanic in Liberia , where spares are far away, few and expensive.
Batteries tend to get sulphur on the plates with old age and misuse. This increases internal resistance and makes the battery useless for cranking. Do like this:
Empty the battery and put it upside down. Flush it with lots of water at moderate pressure and watch a lot of gunk be drained .
Fill the battery with tap water. Hook it up in series with a 60 W lamp and plug it in to 220 V, Lamp will turn halfway bright. Leave it like this for days.
Disconnect and again turn it upside down and flush it out until clean water only drains out.
Fill it as you would with a new uncharged battery ( acid of right conc) and charge.
Voila, you will now have a battery that works for several months more and has decent cranking amps.
If a cell is shorted at start, it is almost hopeless though.
Best regards
Ola
Batteries tend to get sulphur on the plates with old age and misuse. This increases internal resistance and makes the battery useless for cranking. Do like this:
Empty the battery and put it upside down. Flush it with lots of water at moderate pressure and watch a lot of gunk be drained .
Fill the battery with tap water. Hook it up in series with a 60 W lamp and plug it in to 220 V, Lamp will turn halfway bright. Leave it like this for days.
Disconnect and again turn it upside down and flush it out until clean water only drains out.
Fill it as you would with a new uncharged battery ( acid of right conc) and charge.
Voila, you will now have a battery that works for several months more and has decent cranking amps.
If a cell is shorted at start, it is almost hopeless though.
Best regards
Ola
What polarity do you use in hooking up the 220v?
Positive to positive or common to positve?
I have a couple of CTEK 3300s. I have an original BMW battery in a 1999 M Coupe (by Douglas) and it was showing signs of starting to salt out (car gets stored a lot between uses). The CTEK did bring that battery back to life, I have no troubles with it when the car is at my house and not hooked up.
Mooniac
Well-known member
I'm a fan of the Battery MINDer products for my ground vehicles and airplane.
General Geoff
Well-known member
I've brought back many 12V batteries of various types from the dead with my BatteryMinder (model 12248). It's paid for itself many times over.
IndyGarage
Well-known member
Sorry but I've had absolutely no luck with a battery minder. I have two of them, the full sized one and the mini one. No luck with either.
I've tried them on many batteries. Just the last three weeks I've had ithe large one on a car battery that's marginal while I fixed the car transmission.
The battery minder showed it being "maintained" - not sulphated. Great, I thought, so I put the battery in the car - it wouldn't even crank the engine.
I'm curious as to how you brought them back from the dead.
White 99
Well-known member
I had a Battery Minder bring back a riding lawn mower battery once. It took like 3 or 4 weeks to do but I got another year or two out of it.
I tried it on another mower battery without any luck.
I do use it on the rest of my stuff and hope it does some good.
Any vehicle that goes off the property gets the battery changed at 4 years so I can't really tell.
I tried it on another mower battery without any luck.
I do use it on the rest of my stuff and hope it does some good.
Any vehicle that goes off the property gets the battery changed at 4 years so I can't really tell.
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IndyGarage
Well-known member
General Geoff
Well-known member
All of my successful recoveries began with the minder showing the battery as sulphated. The red light blinks when this happens. Leave it on the charger in that state for at least 72 hours, the longer the better. Then disconnect the battery, let it sit for a full day (test voltage/load at this point if you'd like) and put it on the charger again. It should be good to go when it switches to float/maintain.
Some dead batteries can be revived with an ordinary charger. I have old cars with severe drain issues, as in the batteries have been dead dead dead maybe a few dozen times. One of them I bought had a battery that was dead for months with half a dozen cycles of being jump started etc. I got about another year out of it.
Desulphating doesn't appear to be total BS, but google some and most of the battery guys seem to think NONE of the products sold to consumers is powerful enough to do anything.
Its also been about 10 years these type of products have been out, and I have not seen ONE good study done on them. Something serious like buying a batch of junkyard batteries and opening them up and inspecting the plates, putting them back together and run the device, then open back up and inspect again. Everything is anecdotal, impressions of what might be going on, and that is the soil snake oil thrives in.
Desulphating doesn't appear to be total BS, but google some and most of the battery guys seem to think NONE of the products sold to consumers is powerful enough to do anything.
Its also been about 10 years these type of products have been out, and I have not seen ONE good study done on them. Something serious like buying a batch of junkyard batteries and opening them up and inspecting the plates, putting them back together and run the device, then open back up and inspect again. Everything is anecdotal, impressions of what might be going on, and that is the soil snake oil thrives in.
IndyGarage
Well-known member
I've done exactly that and gotten nothing - nada - from a battery minder.
They work good as chargers, but forget the desulphating for me.
I think Danglerb has it right - they might fix a very lightly sulphated battery, but anything with serious sulphation isn't going to fix with one of those wimpy machines.
They probably can't make them strong enough, because consumers would blow up their batteries and they'd get sued.