I made the mistake of leaving my battery connected in my car as it sat in storage for over a year. As expected it was beyond dead when I went to start it last week. I pulled it and put it on a 2amp trickle charge two days ago and it didn't move on the gauge and read at 0.13 volts when I took a reading yesterday. I put it on the 5amp faster charge yesterday afternoon and saw no movement after a couple hours when I checked, still sitting at 0.13 volts. Is there something I'm missing or is the battery FUBAR? Is it worth putting in the car and trying to jump it with my truck? It was a brand new AC Delco battery when I got it last year and am hoping it isn't a waste and also that I don't have to buy another battery now. Any suggestions are appreciated.
Saving a dead battery?
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Most likely done for, BUT if you can manage to get a tiny little bit of charge into it, it had a chance of coming back. Batteries don't like to take a charge when they are that dead. I'd pump some power into it to try to shock it back so you can then charge it. Does your charger have the jump start option where it throws 100 amps at it? If so do that, I think on most chargers it times out after 2 minutes or something. Don't want to keep it on that much current very long. But when that's done, then try a 5 amp charge for a day.
a dead batery reverses polarity and will not take a charge. I have a CTek charger which will alternated between the 2 polarities until the polarities are corrected and then charge the battery
meh FWIW I sometimes throw in another battery attach the batteries together ( in parallel if I recall HS science class ) just enough to get the trickle charger to start working for an hour or so. If it starts to charge and takes some juice then back to the dead dead battery with the charger and see if it takes the charge 100%. With having the fleet at work now I have been messing with a half pallet of old batteries in the last year. Out of 16 I got 3 to come back to a respectable CCA. Most would end up with 12v but less than 400 CCA so they were junked for scrap value and money used to buy new.
Either way the battery is likely damaged beyond 100% repair. If you have a warrenty it may be time to cash it in. Typically if they are discharged and freeze they are done
Either way the battery is likely damaged beyond 100% repair. If you have a warrenty it may be time to cash it in. Typically if they are discharged and freeze they are done
remove the cover and make sure its full of water, if not top it off with some deionized water.
i've also have friends swear that adding a drop of mineral oil has brought batteries back to life.
sometimes it takes a while, i've got 2 lead batteries in my garage i've been working on for about 3 weeks. i've got a batteryminder model 2012 maintenance charger that desulfates, i've been going back and forth between that and throwing 5 amps at it with another computer charger...
the battery minder randomly tests after so long and throws a "bad cell" or a "weak battery" error... so far i've got about two days on the batteryminder without an error...
i've also have friends swear that adding a drop of mineral oil has brought batteries back to life.
sometimes it takes a while, i've got 2 lead batteries in my garage i've been working on for about 3 weeks. i've got a batteryminder model 2012 maintenance charger that desulfates, i've been going back and forth between that and throwing 5 amps at it with another computer charger...
the battery minder randomly tests after so long and throws a "bad cell" or a "weak battery" error... so far i've got about two days on the batteryminder without an error...
Do the caps come off? In olden days it was possible to buy a gallon of battery acid. Then you drain, rinse, and refill with fresh acid and charge. That has worked well for me on "free" batteries that were supposedly dead. The problem is that the public cannot be trusted with a corrosive like battery acid and the lawyers have made it a liability. Good luck finding any.
someone sued McDonlad's for burning herself with the "hot" coffee and made lots of $$$$$$.....can't trust anyone to have common sense any longer...
Thanks for all of the input. I’m going to try “shocking” it with the high amp jump start option then throwing 5 amps at it for another day or so and see what it does. I’m in AZ so it wasn’t much the cold that I think did it in but the extreme heat of the summer. Batteries don’t last long around here as it is but letting this one die like this is my own fault. Should have known better than to not remove it when the car wasn’t being driven.
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