car battery problems

[Vintage Veloce]

OK, so I have an old Alfa Romeo (insert reliability joke here).
Actually, my car is in excellent condition and has been very reliable. ;-)

At any rate, the battery is a couple years old but had been fine. I was on a drive and I stopped for 10 minutes, got back in the car and then the car wouldn't start. Didn't turn over, no click, nothing. I didn't spend much time diagnosing it as I had barely driven the car for the past 6 months and I just assumed the battery was shot.
So I called AAA. And of course the car started immediately when they showed up. They tested the battery, and the condition was fine. Hmm...

So I drove the car home and parked it. I let a week or two go by and then spent some time poking around, looking for loose wires and stuff and I didn't really find anything. But I didn't start the car.

Today I go to charge the battery, and the electronic charger refuses to charge it. Now this is an old car and there is no parasitic drain from anything. So I get the volt meter out, and the battery measures about 1.5V. What?

I disconnect the positive terminal and I put the charger back on, thinking I'll try the recondition mode, but lo and behold the battery charger immediately indicates the battery is now OK! I quickly disconnect the charger and check the voltage: It's now back up to normal! WTF?

I would think I somehow handled the charger or voltmeter wrong when it read the battery as completely dead (1V)... except this seems just like what happened when the car wouldn't start a couple weeks ago.

So, the question: Is there some battery failure mode where the battery voltage goes to near zero, and then springs back to life? Anything obvious I should check?

C

 

[kd3pc]

given the description...you have a bad cable/significant load in the car...

I would disconnect and remove the battery, take it to be tested...charge, voltage and load/current capacity.

If all that works well, then I would break out a decent DMM and test each pre-made cable. I have seen a beautiful crimped cable...measure wide open on the meter. Be sure to wiggle and twist the cable with the meter in place and watch for change...

As to your last question, yes load can drag the battery down to 8-10 volts while the starter is engaged and the it should jump back to 12.6vDC or better. It should be able to do this several times before the voltage drops and stays low.

testing will exercise these functions.

 

[Vintage Veloce]

Well, I did a bit more testing. When I wrote the original post, I had just put the battery on the charger. And the charger indicated it was fully charged in a half hour... that didn't seem right, it always takes longer than that.
So checked the battery voltage and it was quickly falling. Put in on the car for a minute and turned on the ignition but didn't start that car (Just to load it for a moment). Turned off the ignition and checked the battery, now around 12.0 V. Not good.
So apparently the battery is shot and behaving strangely.
What is strangest to me, is that it tested OK by the AAA guys tester, and that my charger seemed to think it was fully charged after just a 1/2 hour.
I have done lots of battery charging in my time, and just have never sen one fail this way. I guess there is a first time for everything!

(For the heck of it, I'm running it through the charger's "recondition mode". Just want to see what happens, but I'll get a new battery.)

 

[NitroShark]

The only proper way to test the battery is with a good load tester. You'll be fooled into thinking the battery's good by other methods

 

[S/RConcepts]

It sounds like a bad cell in the battery to me, batteries do really weird things under that circumstance. It gets worse when you have a heavy amount of electronic controls in the vehicle, you'll hear all types of weird noises, a lot of buzzes and clicks and such.

 

[livinlife]

Batteries can be like some women, finicky bitc.......

 

[brownbagg]

old battery, that shorting itself out. easy man terms, the plates are touching each other and shorting out

 

[padroo]

I read somewhere recently that when a battery is sitting unused and not charged gets sulfated and one of the signs is you put a charger on it and it appears to charge fast but has no capacity to do any cranking. There are new testers out there that use new technology for testing, if I can find a link I will post it.

Several years ago I took a battery to Walmart and the guy threw the load tester on it right at the counter and immediately said it was good. Then I told him the problem I was having and he said if I have an hour they have a high dollar tester in the shop and it runs the battery through several tests but I didn't get to see the actual computer controlled test. When I returned the battery tested good and he handed me a computer print out and didn't charge me for it. The battery passed.

 

[RobSmith]

Put the battery on the floor...pick one end up about 1" off the floor and drop it. This little "bump" shakes the "electrolysis growth" off the plates... this is only a temporary fix..your battery is dying.

 

[Vintage Veloce]

Follow up report:

So I went and bought a new battery today. It's not worth the effort or worry for me to play with the old one.
But I did run the old battery through my charger's recondition mode, and then charged it. And then I let it sit, disconnected for a couple days. Here is what the Pep Boys Charger said:
View media item 69074
That's a laugh. I still left it behind and bought a new one. ;-)

C

 

[G McKay]

If you took the terminal off and then put it back on and it showed charge, I would say that you need to clean the terminals on the battery AND the battery cable ends. This is always the first thing you should do when you have a battery that is acting up.



_________________________

I hate being bipolar!! It's awesome!!

 

[Sticks McGee]

A lot of the newer testers do the battery load test with mathematics and not with a real load on them. I have a midtronics tester at work that does this. I have had it show all kinds of goofy things and tell me a battery is good when it's bad and vice versa. My old carbon pile tester tells me the truth on the load tho.

I would also very thoroughly clean the cable ends at the battery and also the other ends. Even if they appear good and tight I would pull them apart and clean with a wire brush or sandpaper, etc. Corrosion and oxidation can form between the mating parts where you cannot physically see it. A good thin coating of dielectric grease at all the mating surfaces can help too.

 

[stonesg]

Fact is most, "battery testers" and, "reconditioning" setups are BS.

I have a friend that has a Craftsman battery charger that has a, "Percent Charge" digital gauge. He keeps referring to it and I keep pointing out that it's just as wild *** guess and that there's no way the box can know what type of battery is hooked up to it.

Unless the battery is instrumented and the charger has actual data on the type of battery and feedback data, it's always a guess based on the voltage it's seeing at best.

A load tester will tell you much more than most battery chargers. Even then, the voltage and voltage under load results are still just data points to troubleshoot the whole system.

TG

 

[jayoldschool]

All your symptoms and diagnosis leads to good battery and poor battery terminal connections.

 

[APEowner]

Assuming proper diagnostic and testing techniques I suspect that the battery has a bad internal connection to one of the posts.

 

[Bondo]

So, the question: Is there some battery failure mode where the battery voltage goes to near zero, and then springs back to life? Anything obvious I should check?

Ayuh,.... Clean the battery's terminals, 'n connectors to shiny clean metal Clean,...

Reassemble, then Grease the terminals with plain ole grease to keep 'em from corrodin' again,...

 

[mslim]

If your Guilia is like my old Giulietta, then the battery is in the trunk with a long cable run the length of the chassis. This arrangement works well in my wife's '01 325i but with what I remember about Italian wiring, is it possible you have a large resistance loss due to the length of the cable? Check the resistance on the cable and see if you have a significant loss.

If this is a significant factor, then I would suggest making up your own cable from #2 AWG welding or entertainment cable.

Good luck! Your Alfa is beautiful.

 

[The Tool Tyrant]

Did you check the level of the Marinara sauce in all six cells?

 

[Vintage Veloce]

I did check the marinara sauce. ;-). Also, I tested the battery at the battery terminals, perfectly clean with the probes points pushed into the terminals.
Battery is under the hood with perfect new cables.
I'm pretty competent at electrical stuff. This did seem to be a case of internal battery issues (sulfation/electrolysis growth/whatever). The battery did sit for months and then get recharged sporadically for the past two years, so it had a pretty rough life. (The car was in storage as we moved and then I built a new garage).
Thanks for the help guys!