car battery dead

:On Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:45:42 -0500, krw wrote: : :>On Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:20:36 -0700, Jim Thompson :> wrote: :>

:>>On Thu, 06 Aug 2009 01:52:17 GMT, Ross Herbert :>> wrote: :>>

:>>>On Wed, 05 Aug 2009 08:45:35 -0500, AZ Nomad :>>>wrote: :>>>

:>>>:On Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:16:27 -0700, John Larkin :>>> wrote: :>>>:>My wife's car is dead. It's in the garage, a hard push uphill to get :>>>:>it out to jump-start, so I figured I'd build a battery charger. We :>>>: :>>>:use the alternator. do the hard push uphill jumpstart routine once :>>>:more, and drive it somewhere that sells batteries. Replace the :>>>:failed battery. :>>>: :>>>:Next time, replace the battery when it starts to fail instead when it :>>>:is completely shot. Make sure there's nothing else draining the battery :>>>:like a bad alternator when the car is stopped. :>>>

:>>>

:>>>My last battery started the car one evening and next morning it wouldn't budge :>>>the starter motor an inch. Recommending preventative replacement doesn't work :>>>where you have no indication that the battery is about to fail? :>>>

:>>>It is fairly common for "sudden" battery failure to occur during cold weather in :>>>my experience. That is not a scientific explanation, just an observation. :>>

:>>Most of my battery failures in AZ seem to be failure of the inter-cell :>>connector; or a shorted cell. :>

:>ALl of my battery failures have been shorted cells, too. Even if they :>aren't mistreated in the AZ sun, crud eventually does 'em in. : :Sulfate "junk" compounds fall to the bottom of the cell and eventually :short them out. : : ...Jim Thompson

Plate construction techniques for general use lead-acid batteries is pretty minimal. I think the manufacturers have got the "design" just about right so the plate material falls out and shorts at least one cell after 5 years of service.

Higher spec batteries for industrial use are much better designed for long life.

On Thu, 06 Aug 2009 08:14:13 -0700, Joerg wrote:

:Ross Herbert wrote: :> On Wed, 05 Aug 2009 08:45:35 -0500, AZ Nomad :> wrote: :> :> :On Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:16:27 -0700, John Larkin :> wrote: :> :>My wife's car is dead. It's in the garage, a hard push uphill to get :> :>it out to jump-start, so I figured I'd build a battery charger. We :> : :> :use the alternator. do the hard push uphill jumpstart routine once :> :more, and drive it somewhere that sells batteries. Replace the :> :failed battery. :> : :> :Next time, replace the battery when it starts to fail instead when it :> :is completely shot. Make sure there's nothing else draining the battery :> :like a bad alternator when the car is stopped. :> :> :> My last battery started the car one evening and next morning it wouldn't budge :> the starter motor an inch. Recommending preventative replacement doesn't work :> where you have no indication that the battery is about to fail? :> : :Almost every technical device has such failure modes. But in most cases :people just don't monitor the telltale signs. A lot of times you hear a :car in the neigborhood doing that tired ahhh-choo ... ahhh-choo ... :vroom. Then one morning it's a bit more chilly and ahhh-choo ... :ahhh-phhhht. That's preventable. My battery slowed a wee bit last fall :so I replaced it. That sped up the starter to where it used to be. No :more worries on that late night flight back home as to whether it'll :start. The old one can still do it's job as a back-up power source. I :know, I know, it ain't a deep cycle battery but it's essentially free. : : :> It is fairly common for "sudden" battery failure to occur during cold weather in :> my experience. That is not a scientific explanation, just an observation. : : :In my roughly 30 years of driving I never had a truly sudden failure. :But that could be just coincidence or luck.

Must be different manufacture where you are.. My last 2 batteries have failed suddenly overnight. I agree there probably are subtle hints that a battery is on the way out but to the average person the change is so minimal, and over such a fairly long period of time, that the signs are not perceptible. In my case my car started on the first attempt as usual one evening and the next morning grr,,grrr,, clunk (solenoid only).

Ross Herbert wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

When you consider thermal cycling and the severe shock and vibration in the auto environment,a 5 yr life doesn't sound so bad(IMHO).

How do those SLAs with the circular cell construction hold up? I can't recall the manufacturer or the name of the batteries,but they're aftermarket batteries used in racing and custom cars.

Yes it will work. However for car batteries (in particular) serrated (discontinuous) charging current works best. I think it may have something with aqueous ion diffusion rates. If so it would be most important at high charge rates.

--=20 Transmitted with recycled bits. Damnly my frank, I don't give a dear

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Actually the allowable emissions for that make, model, and year steadily increased, a result of old legislation from when that was typical.

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Genuine DI water is typically chemically cleaner than ordinary distilled water. The issue is whether or not it really is DI water.

Now that is a real white knuckle charger.

The typical owner, tries again, the car starts, and then pretends nothing is wrong. Only when no amount of trying will start the car is anything done and then the story is that the battery suddenly failed.

Optima. Interstate Batteries sell them.

Naaah! Just make sure you follow that last sentence ;-)

...Jim Thompson

I'm pretty sure it is - the shop's deionizer is right next to the deep sink. It looks a lot like a water softener, but aren't they pretty much the same thing?

Thanks! Rich

Both may use ion-exchange resins to remove unwanted mineral ions. However, the end results are quite different and "softened" water is not an acceptable substitute for DI water.

S "water softener" is a relatively simple device, which simply substitutes sodium ions for the unwanted minerals (e.g. calcium). You end up with water which contains just about as much metallic ion content as you started with... it's just less prone to cause "hard water" problems (e.g. binding to soap and creating an insoluble scum). I understand that people who are on a restricted- sodium diet (for e.g. blood-pressure problems) are advised *not* to drink "softened" water due to its relatively high salt content.

The ion-exchange resin in a water softener is regenerated occasionally by flooding it with concentrated salt brine.

Deionizers often run the water through an initial purification step (e.g. reverse osmosis). They then use a more sophisticated type of ion-exchange resin setup to replace the unwanted ions in the incoming water with H+ and OH- ions (not sodium ions) which then combine to create water.

A multi-stage ion-exchange deionizer can deliver extremely pure water.

Thanks! Rich

There's no need to get too anal over it. It isn't like you're going to be running thousands of gallons of water through a battery.

The difference between "genuine DI water" and water run through a simple filter isn't enough to matter. If you can't taste the difference, the battery won't care either.

Not true. It depends very much on the particular unwanted dissolved contaminants. Dissolved arsenic just happens to be a good example. Standard water softeners won't remove As, or most transition metals. Bottom line, reverse osmosis it the easiest process for basic purified (but not quite deionized) water in the presence of high metals (other than alkaline earth [column 2A] "hard water") concentrations.

You really have tons of arsenic in your drinking water, enough to kill a car battery? I'd hate to live in your region.

Can you provide a single example of drinking water having enough arsenic to kill a car battery and not send thousands to the emergency room? I think you're talking out of your ass.

I use reverse osmosis myself, I don't bother with "geniune DI water" (what a crock). However, I think any filtering will be more than enough and in fact, I don't buy the theory that plain drinking water isn't fine. It isn't like you're running thousands of gallons through a battery and the contiminents will be left behind and build up. In the lifetime of a car battery, less than two gallons of water will be added.

I just use distilled water. It's real cheap, 80 cents a gallon or so, no biggie. Supposed to use it in steam irons, altho I bet few do.

Not true. Humans can tolerate quite high levels of dissolved salts like magnesium, calcium and sodium chlorides in drinking water.

Lead acid batteries do not like chloride contamination.

Much more likely to be chloride contamination that does the damage.

Your loss. Lead acid batteries will last longer if you look after them.

That isn't the point. It only takes a small amount of chloride impurity to cause trouble. There is good reason why lead acid batteries use sulphuric acid as the electrolyte.

Regards, Martin Brown

Then again, you can get essentially distilled water from the catch basin of your dehumidifier. (you might want to run it through a coffee filter to catch the dust.) :-)

Cheers! Rich