Recondition A dead battery?

[repairman54]

I'd put this in the rinse and reroll condoms category.

 

[Donald]

I'm looking for tutorials or guides to recondition auto batteries and any advice from anyone that has tried it.
I'm thinking about emptying one and replacing the acid and distilled water. I have read a couple of pages on the web and watched a YouTube video or two So I wonder if anyone has had any good luck doing it with a dead battery.


Thank you

If you value your time then do proper battery maintenance (don't let plates get exposed, charge the battery every couple of weeks if the vehicle is not driven regularly, clean battery terminals, move out of hot Texas) and when the battery fails a load test then replace it.

 

[BrainPain]

I have read thru the post so far and thank everyone for their input.

 

[nobb]

For flooded lead acid batteries, the only method I've used that worked was to use a welder.

Also known as doing an equalizing charge. This can also be done with a fixed voltage supply ~15-16V. It works on batteries where the problem is sulphated plates and not physical damage or shorts. It's basically doing a light boil on the plates to blast away any sulphation.

What can also help is if you shake the battery a bit to mix the acid, or do a partial discharge as part of the cycle to mix things up. The key sign to look for is when the battery still reads >12V but the CCA rating has diminished from new, that's a good indication that the battery could use a nice equalization. Equalizing works even better than using those pulse chargers since it's more aggressive, the only thing is it involves a little more work since you need to open up the vents.

 

[50yr Street Mech]

Tried to re-juvenate an old FLA battery one time. No good. Was a hassle anyway. Never again. Now, I just buy new FLA's from Walmart, and keep the batteries on a NOCO Genius 2 maintainer, which has a desulfator built into it. The vehicles are not used on a daily basis, so I put the NOCO's on them when not in daily use. So far, so good. Have one FLA going on 6 years old, and it passes battery tests exceedingly well.

 

[Lubener]

I'm looking for tutorials or guides to recondition auto batteries and any advice from anyone that has tried it.
I'm thinking about emptying one and replacing the acid and distilled water. I have read a couple of pages on the web and watched a YouTube video or two So I wonder if anyone has had any good luck doing it with a dead battery.


Thank you

A reconditioned battery cannot be relied on. I wouldn't waste my time attempting it.