Reconditoning battery
 

It there any utility in periodically reconditioning a battery. I have an electronic charger that has a recondition mode. It did not revive a bad battery even after the 5 24 hr cycles recommended. The instructions say one may episodically recondition a battery to keep it in optimal condition. Does anyone have any data or knowledgeable opinion?

There are 2 things that are done to flooded lead acid batteries to help maintain them:

Equalizing
Desulfation

I don't know which of these your charger is doing. Neither will "revive" a bad battery. You can google those terms and read tons about them. Mostly those techniques are used on deep cycle batteries and backup batteries. Car starting batteries generally do not need this done and do not benefit from it.

Car batteries need to have water added periodically to keep the plates submerged. Car batteries generally last as long as the warranty, as a rule of thumb. Car batteries need to be float charged if they are left unused for long periods. If they are sitting for long periods of several months then a desulfation system is not a bad idea and some of these are pretty cheap.

So the short answer is, if this is about the battery in your car, if it is shot then you need a new one.

It is my understanding that recondition refers to desulfation. My charger is a "three stage" which starts at higher amps 15-25 if needed then slows down and the will add only if needed at low amps eg .6 or so.

It is difficult to recondition a bad automotive starting battery, the plates are too thin and not fiber-reinforced like a deep-cycle battery, they will warp from the heat, plus it is not designed to handle the out-gassing that active boiling will create.

I have to agree with mpolli. You might be able to get some capacity back, but it's the beginning of the end.

I've got a Battery Minder Plus charger maintainer conditioner that I've used to bring back to life some batteries I thought were junk. You have to leave it in the conditioner mode for at least a week, I let it work for 2 or 3 weeks. It won't bring back a battery with a bad cell or internal shorts but I had an 8 year old Bosch battery in the basement for 2 years and was testing at 150 CCA. After I got the Battery Minder I hooked it up for a week and tested it again. It was up near 300 CCA. After another week over 400 CCA. And by the end of the 3rd week it was at 535 CCA and almost at 13 volts.

I say leave it connected a good 2 weeks and see what it puts out then.

I tossed/recycled the bad battery several days ago. I guess I could have left my charger on for several weeks-it goes off and on accoring to need.

I have a bank of deep cycles on a BatteryMinder with desulfation. I am glad to hear it works as advertised!

Yup, desulfation is very slow. When it does work, it takes quite a while.


-tp