Anyone here tried to repair a battery with sulfuric acid?
CK5
Register an account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members.
Repair battery with sulfuric acid?
- Thread starter wazzabie
- Start date
I’ve heard that’s what the local used battery place does to get old stuff good enough to sell.
I have no idea if they do anything else to them.
I have no idea if they do anything else to them.
So here’s something confusing. My Schumacher battery charger has a sulfide detector and goes into a desulfation mode. That sounds counterintuitive to battery shops adding sulfuric acid. Or is that to remove the sulfur?
Sulfuric acid is what batteries use.
What happens is some of the Sulfuric ions bind with lead ions and form sulfites that deposit on the plates and block the electron flow.
You need to clean the plates first either by physically breaking the layer off or by electric shock using desulfating chargers.
Then you replace the weakened acid with fresh acid
I've heard of draining the battery, then adding an epsom salt solution to break down the sulfation. That gets drained and rinsed, then new (or reconditioned) acid gets poured back in. I've brought unchargeable stuff back to life just by adding distilled water, but none of those batteries was ever very good after that.
A hydrometer used to be a normal mechanics tool. You could pop the caps off, measure the electrolyte in each cell and top them off. Then most car batteries became "maintenance free", but I'm not sure how different the construction is.
A hydrometer used to be a normal mechanics tool. You could pop the caps off, measure the electrolyte in each cell and top them off. Then most car batteries became "maintenance free", but I'm not sure how different the construction is.
The construction is the same, it's just not easy access to the electrolyte
And by the way Epsom salt does not clean the sulfates.
It does change the chargeability for a little bit but does more damage by adding more deposits that block charging shortly after.
The only way I know that fixes those conditions are desulfating chargers.
I have successfully fixed a few, not all can be fixed.
