Date code on new marine starting battery

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I need to replace my marine starting battery. Due to incentives and coupons etc... I went to Advance Auto to see what they have. In stock they had two starting batteries in the size I need. Both had a date code of 8/16. Is that too old or too long to have been sitting on a shelf. Does that affect the life of the battery to have been sitting for 7 months with no charging? Thanks for any input.
 
Do you have another store that you can check? Sounds like you may have already bought it?

Just charge it full before putting it into service if possible
 
Originally Posted By: Donald
It was a blizzard yesterday in NY and you need a marine starting battery?

Do you have a charger with a desulfating cycle.


Thanks for the replies everyone. Donald I was waiting for someone to comment on the snowstorm! I guess while snowblowing about 5 hours over the past two days I occupied my mind about getting the boat ready.
The charger I have is a Shumacher and it doesn't have a desulfating cycle. I dont even know what that is Ill have to look that up.
I didnt buy the battery yet but went to AAP because Ill have about 50 bucks in incentives. Battery costs 69.99 so thats a good deal. Not a good deal though if I'm buying something that has degraded in quality by sitting.
There are two more AAPs in my area. I might go check them for a newer date code.
 
You can try shipping to home if that's an option, they might have fresher stock.

Also I wouldn't use any Schumacher charger on a battery that I cared about.
 
Originally Posted By: stcif
What charger would you recommend?


I have a NOCO G3500. It's a bit slow if you need to fully charge a big battery, but as a maintainer it's top notch. I have a Lifeline AGM battery in my boat and the AGM mode on the NOCO is great for that.
 
Originally Posted By: whosmatt
I have a Lifeline AGM battery in my boat and the AGM mode on the NOCO is great for that.


Lifeline make a deep cycle AGM battery without equal. They also have enough CCA to make a great starting/dual purpose battery, but the Northstar anbd Odyssey AGM have considerably higher CCA ratings.

Their charging parameters when regularly deeply cycled are outside the capabilities of your Noco, even on the AGM setting.

Charging outside their recommendations is obviously not going to kill a battery quickly, but you will not get the most lifespan from it, no matter how much confidence you have in the Noco charger, or its marketing.

Lifeline says For a 100Ah capacity battery it is recommended to charge at no less than 20 amps, until 14.3v is reached then hold 14.3v (+/-0.1v) until current tapers to 0.5am at shich point the battery can be considered fully charged. The tapering stage at absorption voltage will take no less than 4 hours, and after much abuse( partial state of charge cycling) can take much much longer.

Without performing an accurate 20 hour capacity test, which requires a constant 5 amp load for 20 hours for a 100AH battery, One has very little idea the true remaining capacity of their battery.

I have a Northstar AGM on it with 500 deep cycles and it would pass most any common 'test' with flying colors, but a true 20 hour capacity test would show it is more than half way through its expected lifespan where they claim 900 cycles to 50%. These would be lab cycles where the battery was discharged exactly to 50% and recharged perfectly before being discharged again to 50%. Meaning never going to happen outside a LABoratory.

But it is safe to say, if a Lifeline battery is regularly deeply cycled, and it does not get this minimum 20% charge rate, then its capacity is compromised to some degree.

Please throw out the 'trickle charge everything' mentality when charging well depleted AGM batteries. They can and regularly are tickled to death with too little charging current, and this despite internet folklore which recommends trickle charging everything as always being best.

The key to Excellent lead acid battery longevity is returning the battery to 100% charged promptly after any discharge. With AGM batteries, the RATE at which they are recharged is also an important factor. Odyssey AGM says no less than 40% when deeply cycled. 40 amps minimum for their group 31 PC2150 until 14.7v is reached, then hold 14.7v for 4 more hours.

Lifelines are top Dollar and top quality AGM batteries, but this does not make them resistant to abuse, and abuse qualifies as chronically undercharging it/them, or charging them too slowly each tme when cycled to the 50% state of charge range. The less deeply they are discharged the less important the charging parameters are met, but they cannot be discounted just because of a chargers marketing material or one's fondness for the word 'trickle'.

YOur confidence in the Noco, when used on your Lifeline AGM, is very misplaced unless you almost never discharge it below 80% state of charge.

Scroll down to page 19 for charging instructions of a Lifeline AGM:

http://lifelinebatteries.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/manual.pdf

Not that I research garage chargers, but I do not know of any which would be able to come close to the recommendations listed in the PDF above.

I quit screwing around with 'automatic', and use a modified 40 amp adjustable voltage power supply to keep almost any lead acid 12v battery happy, and my Northstar AGM is performing extremely well being regularly deeply cycled. All because of the power supply's ability to seek( with 40 amps) and then hold absorption voltage as long as required for amps to taper to the prescribed level at which the battery can be considered fully charged.

Those that have tested 'pulse desulfation' chrgers on sulfated deep cycle batteries have never been able to detect any regained capacity that a normal extended charge cycle would not also have provided.

Beware of marketing, and 'pulse desulfating' chargers. That feature likely does nothing 99.5% of the time, but help sell the charger.

Quote:
Several companies offer anti-sulfation devices that apply pulses to the battery terminals to prevent and reverse sulfation. Such technologies will lower the sulfation on a healthy battery, but they cannot effectively reverse the condition once present. It’s a “one size fits all” approach and the method is unscientific.

Applying random pulses or blindly inducing an overcharge can harm the battery by promoting grid corrosion. There are no simple methods to measure sulfation, nor are commercial chargers available that apply a calculated overcharge to dissolve the crystals. As with medicine, the most effective remedy is to apply a corrective service for the time needed and not longer.

While anti-sulfation devices can reverse the condition, some battery manufacturers do not recommend the treatment as it tends to create soft shorts that may increase self-discharge. Furthermore, the pulses contain ripple voltage that causes some heating of the battery. Battery manufacturers specify the allowable ripple when charging lead acid batteries.


Source:
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/sulfation_and_how_to_prevent_it

If one is trusting their charger to 100% fully charge any flooded battery with removeable caps, I recommend one also get a Hydrometer like the OTC4619 that has temperature compensation, as a Hydrometer is the battery polygraph, as to state of charge and time and again will prove magically marketed chargers stop well short of 100%, more often than not, and achieving 100% is twice as good as achieving 99%, in terms of keeping a lead acid battery happiest for longest, especially when the battery is cycled to 80% or below regularly.
 
Originally Posted By: wrcsixeight
Originally Posted By: whosmatt
I have a Lifeline AGM battery in my boat and the AGM mode on the NOCO is great for that.

But it is safe to say, if a Lifeline battery is regularly deeply cycled, and it does not get this minimum 20% charge rate, then its capacity is compromised to some degree.

Please throw out the 'trickle charge everything' mentality when charging well depleted AGM batteries. They can and regularly are tickled to death with too little charging current, and this despite internet folklore which recommends trickle charging everything as always being best.


Mine is a starting battery, not a deep cycle. Chemistry aside, I'd find it excruciating to regularly fully charge such a battery with a 3.5A charger. Luckily I've never had to fully charge it. Occasionally after it's been sitting for a few months I'll throw the charger on it just to make sure it's topped off, and it never takes more than a few minutes to show full. Or if I've been running the radio while cleaning the boat and don't want to start the motor to top it off. You get the idea. No deep cycling here.
 
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