Battery question - I think I dumb'd.

[Mad Mike]

Next topic: Desulfation Mode

Snake oil or Real deal?

I have my doubts. Maybe the batteries I've used this on are really old, but I've never recovered a deeply discharged battery with desulfation mode to a point where it lasts any useable length of time after.

A bit of both.

I bought a plus desulphating charger in September. I had a pile of cooked batteries in the garage, so I tried reviving them.

In all, I tried to recover 4 Powersports batteries, 4 car batteries and a deep cycle Marine battery - all were left for dead.

1 car battery did revive, a 2015 OE VW battery I changed in my daughter's Jetta - it would not start the car after sitting 24 hours before I 'fixed' it. It took about a week on pulse, since then it's been holding charge and performing as expected in my beater Jeep which only gets used a few times a month.

I don't think they fix badly damaged batteries, but I suspect they help if you use them after fully discharging a battery.

 

[Mad Mike]

@adri - I have an ancient CTC automotive charger you're welcome to try. You know where to find me.

The simplest thing to do is to trick the smart charger by jumping a good battery in parallel. The smart charger should fire up, after 5 seconds pull the jumpers and the smart charger should keep charging.

Amazon sells DC power supplies with alligator clips for $20.

 

[PrivatePilot]

How did the charger feel about another charger coming on line in parallel? I assume it just thought the battery was charged and gave up?

How did you kill the 12V battery? I thought the volt automatically kept it topped up? I guess if the HV battery was dead that wouldn't work.

I turned it off as soon as the car came back to life so I’m not sure. It didn’t immediately error out or anything fwiw.

I managed to kill the car through the notorious “shift to park“ issue. There’s a little micro switch in the shifter that gets gummed up with age and then when the temperature gets cold sometimes you park the car, push the power button, but it never goes completely to sleep as that little micro switch doesn’t go open. In this case I hadn’t plugged it in since it was already basically still full, and then it sat for two days unplugged. The rest is history.

In related news I know I really need to get my shift or assembly replaced but I’ve heard it’s not an inexpensive job, and it only happens occasionally when the weather gets cold. I’m pretty sure I won’t be this Car’s owner anymore by next winter.

Next topic: Desulfation Mode

Snake oil or Real deal?

I have my doubts. Maybe the batteries I've used this on are really old, but I've never recovered a deeply discharged battery with desulfation mode to a point where it lasts any useable length of time after.

When we bought my wife’s Spyder the battery wasn’t healthy. Left sitting for a week or so without starting, it had a very slow crank. I ran it through two desulfation/recovery modes on my smart charger and two years later it starts like a champ even after not running for three or four weeks. Same battery. Never even touched it nor the cables or anything. It clearly did something.

 

[Lightcycle]

When we bought my wife’s Spyder the battery wasn’t healthy. Left sitting for a week or so without starting, it had a very slow crank. I ran it through two desulfation/recovery modes on my smart charger and two years later it starts like a champ even after not running for three or four weeks. Same battery. Never even touched it nor the cables or anything. It clearly did something.

Hm. Maybe I needed to run through desulfation mode multiple times. Will try that the next time I accidentally run a battery down.

Because there will most *definitely* be a next time...

 

[PrivatePilot]

The simplest thing to do is to trick the smart charger by jumping a good battery in parallel. The smart charger should fire up, after 5 seconds pull the jumpers and the smart charger should keep charging.

Amazon sells DC power supplies with alligator clips for $20.

View attachment 71722

This *might* work, but more often than not if the battery is deeply discharged, it will not - it simply doesn’t have enough amperage to provide a sufficient enough voltage bump for a smart charger to decide to wake up and do it thing.

 

[bitzz]

De-sulfating works. It knocks the sulfates that have taken forever to accumulate off the plates... and as soon as you use the battery again that excess of sulfate goes right back on the plates... so if you de-sulfate a battery, you're going to do it again soon.

 

[Lightcycle]

This *might* work, but more often than not if the battery is deeply discharged, it will not - it simply doesn’t have enough amperage to provide a sufficient enough voltage bump for a smart charger to decide to wake up and do it thing.

My vote is: depends on the smart charger.

If you wake up the smart charger with voltage from the good battery (or DC wall adapter), what happens when you disconnect the good battery? Will the circuitry in the charger sense the drop in voltage (as if you completely took the alligator clips off the terminals) and then automatically switch off again?

 

[Lightcycle]

De-sulfating works. It knocks the sulfates that have taken forever to accumulate off the plates... and as soon as you use the battery again that excess of sulfate goes right back on the plates... so if you de-sulfate a battery, you're going to do it again soon.

That was a confusing read. I think you have desulfation and sulfation mixed up?

 

[Scuba Steve]

My vote is: depends on the smart charger.

If you wake up the smart charger with voltage from the good battery (or DC wall adapter), what happens when you disconnect the good battery? Will the circuitry in the charger sense the drop in voltage (as if you completely took the alligator clips off the terminals) and then automatically switch off again?

No because the BMS will turn on in a lithium battery and it will continue to charge. In a lead acid the voltage comes up enough for the charger to continue on.

Sent from my Pixel 5 using Tapatalk

 

[Scuba Steve]

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong but desulfation is only used with lead acid batteries.

BMS = Lithium battery

Lithium batteries don't have sulfer in them.

Yes I was talking about getting a apparent dead battery to charge sometimes I get behind on the derails. A battery is supposed to be charged before you attempt to desulphate it.

Sent from my Pixel 5 using Tapatalk

 

[Lightcycle]

Yes I was talking about getting a apparent dead battery to charge sometimes I get behind on the derails. A battery is supposed to be charged before you attempt to desulphate it.

I ninja-deleted my msg. Was getting confused about what topic we're discussing.

You're right. If you leave the good battery connected long enough to bring the voltage of the bad battery up, the smart charger won't turn off.

We're crossing streams in this thread, like in Ghostbusters.

 

[bitzz]

Sulfating is a lead acid thing.
The acid part is sulfuric acid, which is sulfates and water in solution. When you over charge the battery the water boils before the acid does, so the water boils off and leaves sulfate salts, that bond to the lead plates, blocking the lead/acid interface, reducing the battery capacity.
When you desulfate (IIRC you charge hard for a couple of minutes, then discharge hard for a couple of minutes and this heats the plates, lessening the sulfate bond) all that sulfate falls to the bottom of the battery, and now you have acid that is over saturated with sulfates... that are now free, en masse, to bond to the plates again. And that's what it does... so basically a sulfated battery is pooched.
Who remembers checking a battery with a hydrometer?
Any lead acid battery that rests at 10v is pooched
Any lead acid battery that rests at 11v is wounded
If your lead acid battery rests at less than 12.7v, you got a problem

 

[PrivatePilot]

My vote is: depends on the smart charger.

If you wake up the smart charger with voltage from the good battery (or DC wall adapter), what happens when you disconnect the good battery? Will the circuitry in the charger sense the drop in voltage (as if you completely took the alligator clips off the terminals) and then automatically switch off again?

Most smart chargers won’t try to charge something that isn’t actually accepting a charge (ie: amps) though. Although feeding it 12 V would probably wake it up and get it to trigger charging mode, as soon as it realizes it can’t actually output any amps I am pretty sure it would immediately kick off again.

There might be a split second where you could parallel in the dead battery while the charger is trying to “charge” the transformer, however I strongly suspect that most smart chargers would be too smart to fall for that even as well since the voltage will plummet the second that you parallel in a big battery sitting at a few volts - it would likely trip off the smart charger, leading it to believe something is very borked up with the battery you’ve asked it to charge.

So we come full circle to needing a good old fashioned dumb trickle charger.

 

[Relax]

Frequently Asked Questions About EarthX Lithium Batteries

This page provides the most frequently asked questions about EarthX Lithium Batteries. If you have further questions please contact our team.

earthxbatteries.com

 

[Relax]

BTW, your Optimate 4S has the BMS reset capability, so just follow the procedure in the video based on your battery version. If it's a recent model, you may only need to disconnect the terminal from the battery and you're good to go.

 

[PrivatePilot]

@adri, any followup?

Pretty sure your battery is fine, just gone into protection mode as everyones saying.

Inquiring minds need to know lol

 

[adri]

Hey everyone, yeah sorry for the delay, a little time away from home, a little time mildly hungover... Happy new year! lol. Thank you guys for all the input, most of which I need to go and re-read because there's been a lot of Holiday'ing lately...

Here are the updates:

I put the battery on the charger - Charger had a red BMS light, which I believe indicates it's ******. I left it on overnight anyway.

The next morning I checked the charger - it seemed to indicate the battery was charging. Weird. I left it on.

(the only thing I can think of that might have happened, is that it's possible the clamps weren't well connected at first, then I messed with them without rechecking the charger and it now said charging? idunno...)

The next day it showed the battery as fully charged. I didn't have time to load test it because I was only there to put the charger on another bike and leave.

A couple days later I load tested the lithium battery, it was still holding voltage and took a load relatively well, though maybe not great for a lithium.

I used this style of load tester and it got to around 11v on load: https://www.amazon.ca/Yaegoo-Battery-Load-Tester-100A/dp/B0CH39JPW4

At this point I don't need the battery for anything as I already swapped a different lithium into my Harley so it's just chilling on the bench.


Looking ahead:

I'm assuming if the battery is taking a charge, holding a charge, and taking a load, it's safe to assume it was my 12v SAE to USB adapter and/or my Android unit that was causing some parasitic draw from being left plugged in.

Is there any way of figuring out which one was the problem?

I know in the long run I should just tap into the wiring harness and get some power from something that only comes on on ignition, but I don't want to start cutting into a perfectly good virgin wiring harness without a buddy who knows wtf he's doing supervising, and that won't be for a while.

 

[GreyGhost]

I'm assuming if the battery is taking a charge, holding a charge, and taking a load, it's safe to assume it was my 12v SAE to USB adapter and/or my Android unit that was causing some parasitic draw from being left plugged in.

Is there any way of figuring out which one was the problem?

Yes. Multimeter set to measure amps. Wiring for test > Battery>multimeter set to measure current (red or black doesn't matter), multimeter> device under test. Current would ideally be zero. A faster/easier test requiring more expensive equipment is look at each device with a thermal camera. If a device is warmer than surroundings after being "off" for a long time, it is consuming power.

 

[PrivatePilot]

Installing a relay for switched power is the simplest solution vs cutting into factory wiring.

 

[Lightcycle]

I know in the long run I should just tap into the wiring harness and get some power from something that only comes on on ignition, but I don't want to start cutting into a perfectly good virgin wiring harness without a buddy who knows wtf he's doing supervising, and that won't be for a while.

There was a fuseblock mentioned in another thread which (I assume) senses the voltage increase of the stator on the battery when the engine is running and provides switched power without splicing:

Thunder Box (TB) - HealTech Electronics Ltd.

The Thunder Box simplifies and safeguards the process of connecting aftermarket electronic accessories to your motorcycle, such as heated grips, GPS, etc...

www.healtech-electronics.com

The ThunderBox can operate in three different modes. Depending on the connection of the WHITE control wire the following modes can be acquired:

Automatic mode: When the engine is started and runs evenly, the TB switches the power outputs ON.
When the engine is stopped, after a few seconds the TB switches the outputs OFF.
Ignition-controlled mode: The TB will switch the outputs ON/OFF (with a few seconds delay) following the ignition key switch position.
Stay-off mode: The TB will not turn the outputs ON even when a battery charger is connected. This is useful during winter storage as a trickle charger won’t activate the TB.

I think a couple of members here use it, they can provide first-hand testimony.