Battery Sulphation solution

[i]

The BatteryMINDer is offered as the latest high tech solution to retrieving batteries that have become capacity reduced as a result of neglect and/or over enthusiastic charging.This little unit resembles those provided to recharge cell phones.Are these gizmos legitimate or flim flam? What say yea?

[29cascadefixer]

Ahhhhh- battery reincarnation. Usually involving a trickle charge to "Break down the Sulfation". Well, my experience as a 30 year car mechanic with this technique is it is a waste of time, money,and hope ! Your better off to raise or lower your personal flag to half mast in your late batteries memory and achieve closure. Then take the dead electromotive lump to a suitable place of disposal, like a place that sells batteries, trade it in on a new one, and gather the new member of your crew to your chest. On second thought, don''t gather the battery to your chest without putting on a rubber apron. Seriously, it is a waste of time. You would be far better off to keep your batteries well maintained than to try and play "Battery Frankenstein" resurecting a dead-dead-dead unit.

[tsenator]

I guess it all depends on whether the battery is really dead (shorted, loss of all material etc, etc) Or whether its just severly sulfated.

I don''t think anyone can argue that battery equalization for sulfated wet cell batteries can bring back the "ghost" of a battery when most people would chuck it due to the lack of apparent

There are quite a few people (and not just the manufacturers) that have done research on the "pulse Generators" and show results for *some* batteries and being able to get the most out of them, its like doing an equalization without the long term high voltage.

Here is a site, with hobbiest who do this sort of thing that discuss a lot about this.

http://www.flex.com/~kalepa/desulf.htm

And here is a Buletin Board with people discussing issues, efficacies, etc.

http://www.flex.com/~kalepa/gbook.htm

ps. 29cascadefixer its not a trickle charge, it more of a higher frequency high voltage spike generator

[29cascadefixer]

Wow--there''s really people out there that resurrect batteries for a hobby ? Wow!Well, I stand corrected on the trickle charge statement. But gosh whizzies, to fool around with dead batteries- man. I''ll still boot ''em, I''ve got other things to do.

[tsenator]

I know....kind of funny. Hey we sail boats, some people bowl and some people scrounge junk yards for half dead batteries.....LOL.

It takes all kinds

;^)

[lecomte38]

I looked at the DS500 Dedsulfator from Inovative Energy Systems. (Jack Rabbit Marine sells them) Very interresting; A little magic box that connects to the battery and sets up a harmonic frequency in the battery to break up the sulfation.

Some people swear by them. I''ve seen them in use but have no first hand knowledge of their effectiveness.

A good equalize charge will do the same thing.

Trojan Man

[k1vsk]

Reminds me of the Algae-X systems sold to clean up diesel fuel.
As W.C. Fields said, "there's a sucker born every minute".

[ModMMax]

In a previous incarnation, I worked as an electrician in a coal mine. This mine used battery operated vehicles called unitracks to deliver supplies to the underground operation (the shafts ran straight into the mountain so there was no vertical shaft). The batteries were wet cell 120v and we regularily dealt with suphate build up. We connected these batteries to enough alternating current to cause the battery to boil. Can't offer the electrical logic but it seemed to work. BTW, if I was going to try this to one of my 8D's, I would remove it from the boat first. There is a lot of spitting and sizzling that goes on and the occasional one would catch fire. I'm betting the high freq idea is a more civilized form of that coal mine practice.

[camaraderie]

Despite the age of this thread...a good topic!
Bill Trayfors is doing some testing on battery pulsation devices...you might want to PM him for his "current" (pun intended!) thoughts!

[alpeaks]

I had a couple of good (10 year old) Trojan deep cycle batteries that were showing about a 50% capacity when I put a cheapo "voltage pulser" on them. They got up to about 60% capacity, and I got two more years of life out of them. By then, I just wanted to have batteries that had good capacity. Everything I've seen about this technology tells me it works to some degree. (It's not at all like trickle or fast or any kind of battery charging.) But you can't restore a shorted or otherwise dead battery.