Rejuvenating Your 12 Volt Car Battery is Definitely Possible if You Know the Tricks!
When my battery started losing it’s juice I tried everything that I know of to keep from having to buy a new one. Over the years owning many many cars, I have learned a few tricks which can be used to help me keep the old one going for a little while longer. This effort has been repeated on some of my cars over the years, some meeting with greater success than others.
What have I learned?
One thing that I have learned for certain is to never ever let any lead acid battery go completely flat since the odds of recovering that battery are really the worst odds of any other condition you can try and undo. The water level needs to be checked even though they claim to be “maintenance free” I have seen many batteries get tossed out when all they needed was some good clean water, a firm cleaning of the posts, and a nice slow charge overnight.
What is my Jeep up to now?
The most recent battery failure I have been working through is on my 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee. The problem with this car is when the battery goes below a specific threshold then the alarm system kicks in. This is usually not a problem for me except that then the lights flash and the horn beeps! This drains the battery even further! I once tried to disconnect this alarm system, but there is an interlock for the ignition and it kept on killing the engine until I put the wires back the way they were. Maybe someday I will find a solution to that peculiar problem.
Someone had to rescue me? that’s insane!
So I had the car die on me today, and had to be rescued, which is hard for someone who is fairly independent and does not like to ask anyone else for help. So I had someone come and jump start me, which got me and the car home where I could diagnose the battery troubles. My test equipment showed that the charging system in the car is working exactly as it should. I noticed that the water was down a little, and I had some spare battery acid from another project so I topped the battery off with that. The charger would not go higher than 1 amp on the 6 amp setting and I noticed that the terminals were getting warmer, and this is not normal! Warm terminals mean there is a high resistance to the flow of electrons, and this symptom indicates corrosion on your battery terminals and cable ends. This may also show as darkened metal which is an oxidization that also blocks the flow of electrical current.
Take an acid trip!
The acid made a small improvement in the battery taking a charge, but still it would not hold that charge for long. Next I checked and cleaned the terminals and posts, Adding a smear of petroleum jelly to the posts to protect them from corrosion. This made some further improvement as the battery would now hold a charge for a little while longer. Next I decided to go old school and I added a teaspoon of Epsom salt to each of the six fill ports on the battery. I shook the battery back and forth to mix this with the new acid and the little bit of clean water that I had to add as well. Now the charger goes to the correct values when I turn it on! The cleaned posts and cable ends combined with the improved conductance of some fresh acid plus the Epsom salt, which is simply magnesium sulfate, can allow the charger to overcome the deadening of the cell plates which is like a scale building up on the lead plates over time. Just realize that this is one case where more is not better! Take it easy and use just the teaspoonful, trust me on this one!
Alternative remedies?
There is such a thing as an electronic battery conditioner which you can plug onto your battery which helps refresh your battery by removing the internal scale from the cells, and I am searching for one as we speak. If it works as advertised I will be writing about it here! But then who am I kidding? it will be written about here on AC-Yahoo! even if it does not work as well!
Contact me with thoughts and questions!
So if I am really lucky I may have saved $75 today by having the skills and tools to correct a problem before it destroyed my battery! Please let me know if you have any questions for me on this or any other kind of project, be it home improvement, automotive, computer, you name it.
Just a word on safety!
Please always wear safety glasses when working around Lead Acid Batteries! because as we all know anything can happen to anyone at anytime! And for me it is usually when I am wearing something nice and clean, or I am in a really big hurry to get somewhere on time.
