Parked the car in March and left the battery in it. Yea stupid. Anyway, decide to take it out before freezing temperatures kill it. It reads 4 volts and 43 CCA. Hooked up a Battery Minder on Wednesday. By Friday it was at 12.5V and 186 CCA. This morning at 13.2V and 274 CCA. Hopefully it will go over 400 CCA in a week or two after some desulphating cycles.
Another Battery Minder rescue in progress
- Thread starter atikovi
- Start date
The 5 1/2 year old Value Power from the xB got replaced with a NAPA Proformer recently, was cranking a little slow, tester showed ~380 CCA, as did the carbon pile tester. A week on the Battery Minder has gotten it back up to 450 already! When the “new“ Corolla is ready, it’s getting the new one, the strongest remaining in the xB (it could start on a lawn & garden battery). OP has an East Penn made Value Power, I’m jealous!
Review the instructions for the BatteryMinder:
I tried resurrecting a super dead battery (read 5.3v) and while it appeared to be happening, it proved futile.
I tried resurrecting a super dead battery (read 5.3v) and while it appeared to be happening, it proved futile.
You have to start charging it with a regular charger first.
I only use a battery minder for maintenance/desulfating on a fully charged battery.
It wouldn't take a charge with a 10 amp charger either.
I missed that. Not mentioned in the original post.
A lot of these "smart" chargers refuse to charge a battery with a terminal voltage that's too low.
Either use a "dumb" charger first, or a variable power supply. I have a 300W variable power supply with adjustable current and voltage (max current 10A, max voltage 30V). I can use it to put 16V into a dead battery if I want.
Make sure you wait 24 hours after disconnecting the charger to test. To eliminate any surface charge. Better yet wait 5 or 7 days.
Battery Minder makes high quality battery maintainer/chargers. I have 4 or 5.
Well, mine still had a resting voltage of ~12.4 VDC, so it wasn’t completely gone. I would always confirm with a carbon pile tester, I’ve had inductive testers read “OK” on junk before.
Or connect a good battery in parallel with the dead one with jumper cables, and charge them both for several hours until the dead battery picks up enough charge.
I am a believer in my Battery Minder and it's ability to recondition older batteries. But, I just experienced something odd: a 10 year old battery with reduced voltage level (that still started the car) would fail on the BM after several hours. I then put my prologix charger on it and it would get "stuck" on the exercising phase. After 24 hours, and never noticing it do the load part of the sequence, I disconnected it and observed the voltage slowly drop down to 12.30 after a few days.
Being 10 years old, I opted to replace it out of caution. I admit I didn't put the old one on the BM often enough. Lesson learned.
Being 10 years old, I opted to replace it out of caution. I admit I didn't put the old one on the BM often enough. Lesson learned.
Thanksgiving update, battery tested at 350 CCA today.
How long now? I have talked to the company and they said it could take a month. Easy to do for a boat battery over the winter. Hard to do with a battery for your car or truck that is driven regularly.
'bout 9 days
Up to 455 CCA today.
I have had good luck with hooking up a jump starter pack for about 30 seconds to trick a smart charger into actually charging.
You likely got few cells alive but others that are not they will get damaged. During use, bad cells will get opposite polarity. (This is due to imbalance of cells) if the fluid levels are not same, there's imbalances. Ideally, water boils off same rate on each cell.
I wouldn't put my trust in this battery.
I wouldn't put my trust in this battery.
He is a car flipper. The battery only has to last long enough to sell the car.
