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Replace Car Battery Now?  

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  1. 1. Should I replace the battery now?

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2 hours ago, Zero Knievel said:

Or, maybe, old batteries weren’t as well insulated, and if a floor had any dampness to it, energy would bleed out through the casing?

You may have been told to never put a car battery directly on the floor of the garage because the cement will cause the battery to leak or loose its charge.

…Is this really true? Knowing what we do about batteries and cement it just doesn’t make sense. Or does it? (Fear not – we know the answer.) Let’s explore the myth of car batteries and the garage floor.

Early Car Batteries

If we take a look back at some of the earliest car batteries we will find that they were lead-acid batteries that had glass cells all encased in a wooden box. This means that if they were left on concrete or cement floors, the moisture from the floor could cause the wooden box to wrap, allowing the glass cells to shift and break.

Of course, the battery acid would leak all over the floor and the battery would be rendered useless. Not great.

Evolution

As the construction of the car battery evolved into a nickel-iron battery encased in steel, and then even further with a hard rubber casing, the issue of breaking glass went away – but not the problem with discharging or “leaking”.

The rubber was porous and often contained carbon. The battery shell would take on the moisture of the floor, as with the wooden encasement, creating an electrical current between the battery cells causing them to discharge. Still not great.

Modern Day Batteries

Brands like Trojan and Odyssey are working overtime to continue to innovate battery design to make battery performance and storage better than ever.

The design of modern day batteries includes a hard plastic shell that eliminates the intake of moisture, thus making the garage floor a great place to put your car battery.

Cement and concrete floors provide a fairly good barrier between the car battery and extreme temperature changes that could otherwise cause damage to the battery cells allowing for a discharge leak.

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2 hours ago, blackhawkxx said:

Cement and concrete floors provide a fairly good barrier between the car battery and extreme temperature changes that could otherwise cause damage to the battery cells allowing for a discharge leak.

I didn't realize they're so temperature sensitive.  It's a good thing they're never installed on a metal plate in a hot environment, like an engine compartment.

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Or ever go from freezing to under-hood temp.  Never.  There's no magic in chargers that us mere mortals buy, excluding the stuff like Oscar mentioned.  Why would a charger's electrons and electron flow valve be different from a car's?  Nonsense, probably left over from a time when they had really bad mechanical regulators.

 

Technology has made it so we can ignore so many old rules.  3k oil changes, 25k spark plugs*, tires that go to shit in 20k....

 

The Smart has a 30k plug interval, WTF?  PO did it at like 23k.

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1 hour ago, SwampNut said:

The Smart has a 30k plug interval, WTF?  PO did it at like 23k.

LOL.  How much you trying to sell it for?

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8 hours ago, SwampNut said:

Why would a charger's electrons and electron flow valve be different from a car's?  Nonsense, probably left over from a time when they had really bad mechanical regulators.

The delivery of the electrons is different and I've seen big changes happen.  I accidentally ran the batteries down in the ambulance, I hit it with a boost charge to get it running and went about my business.  For the next couple days I noticed that it was cranking a bit slow and the ammeter showed much higher than normal charging the whole time I was driving.  I thought the batteries got fucked up, but decided to give it an overnight charge, problems gone.  I've done that a few times with a few vehicles, all on the older side, but with electronic regulators.  It's odd that an alternator could be working hard pushing electrons into a battery, the battery is consuming them, but won't make use of

them.  My explanation is: an alternator holds the voltage around 14, chargers go higher.  The higher voltage basically revives the battery's capacity and resets it's natural voltage.

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Yeah, that one makes little sense to me.  Maybe @mikesail has a theory?

 

Maybe those are examples of aged alternators?  Maybe the old wives' tale comes from cars with defective or simply worn alternators?  I've seen higher voltages in a lot of cars.  Now I'll need to go test a few.

 

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Some, probably most, car's systems are semi-smart and will pump higher voltage to a low battery 'till it comes up to whatever the car likes then hold at the usual 14-ish.  It's enough to counteract the low voltage time to some degree, but it's not the same as a charger holding that for hours.  Some turn the alternator off when it sees no demand, maybe only Honda.  Some monitor battery temp to adjust charging, some can detect AC current 'leaking' from the alternator, etc.  Mine are all pretty simple systems that just bring the battery up to the 14-ish volts the regulator is set at.  The forklift has a super advanced mechanical regulator, I can adjust it on the fly from mild maintenance voltage to super charger by pressing down on the smoke pedal.

 

Part of the magic of the rejuvenator we've used is high voltage.  I've seen 20+ startup voltage on a battery that's really fucked, one that shows to be a nearly open circuit, and then it starts dropping as the battery starts sucking up more amperage than the charger can give to hold the voltage up.  After the bulk of the charge when the battery is demanding less current I've seen it hold 16+ for many hours before ending the charge.  Getting a good battery up to 16+v with a normal charger or alternator takes a lot of amperage and boils the battery, the rejuvenator does it with very little amperage and no battery heating...magic.  The battery's resting voltage becomes higher than normal and stays up for a long time if left sitting.  If put to use the resting voltage stays higher than normal for a little while then settles back to 'normal'.

Edited by superhawk996
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Well yeah, the rejuvenator is a different story, part of the magic is hard pulses too.  Which is why it USUALLY produces little heat, but I've also had a battery get hot (tiny AGM heavily neglected).

 

As part of my susceptibility to these old wives' tales having some foundation...I put the Smart on the charger the other day because I'd been doing a lot of starts and under one mile drives, with the AC and other consumers going.  These are known for weak charging systems (or at least, alleged on all the forums).  Because of how I will use it, I'm considering hanging an SAE plug through the grill and using a charger occasionally.  I guess I should add a cheap voltmeter?

 

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22 hours ago, SwampNut said:

Because of how I will use it, I'm considering hanging an SAE plug through the grill and using a charger occasionally.

Stop lying, you're just searching for an excuse to plug in your gasser.

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