Lead-acid battery to zero volts

Rgbeard

Rgbeard

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rgbeard
I made a mistake, and left a small parasitic drain on my GSX-R, that was parked in the motorcycle garage at our home in Mexico.

Our schedule meant that this was unattended for about two months.

By the time I got to it, the battery was, essentially, zeroed out.

Yep, battery charger does nothing to help it. I brought it home with me, and will swap it at WalMart before heading back South.

My question is - WHY? Why does drawing a lead-acid battery down to zero "break it"?
 
Rgbeard said:
I made a mistake, and left a small parasitic drain on my GSX-R, that was parked in the motorcycle garage at our home in Mexico.

Our schedule meant that this was unattended for about two months.

By the time I got to it, the battery was, essentially, zeroed out.

Yep, battery charger does nothing to help it. I brought it home with me, and will swap it at WalMart before heading back South.

My question is - WHY? Why does drawing a lead-acid battery down to zero "break it"?
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The plates become sulfated. A battery has plates made of lead and lead peroxide, submerged in sulfuric acid, and the discharge process turns them both to lead sulfate and the acid to water. Recharging turns them back into the original stuff. But a slow discharge, coupled with being left that way, results in such thick and hard sulfation that the battery is shot.

In the old days, before your car had the smarts to turn off the headlights you left on, sulfation was a common killer of batteries.
 
There are ways to chemically revive a lead acid battery, but it requires draining the electrolyte and most batteries are sealed nowadays...
 
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IK04 said:
There are ways to chemically revive a lead acid battery, bit it requires draining the electrolyte and most batteries are sealed nowadays...
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Even then, the sulfate has to be removed somehow. The plates are porous, to maximize area, and they're full of it.

Years ago in my hometown there was a battery-rebuilding shop. They took old, sulfated batteries and, as I understand it, put them under a steel box or something, outside, and ran high voltage into them. 220 VAC, maybe. If they didn't explode, the sulfate was blasted off and they could drain the acid and sulfate out and put in new stuff. Not my ideal of fun, cleaning up after exploding batteries.
 
And now you understand why I bought a battery minder for my Jeep Wrangler. When it is driven 100 miles a year (on a heavy year, I really ought to sell it) the battery minder is the only way to keep the battery in shape.
 
any chance connecting a good battery in parallel would let the discharged battery take a charge?
 
Some modern chargers claim to be able to resurect a battery from flat zero, but I've not tried them. One will cost more than a new Gixxer battery, however.
 
You may be able to use a charger that has a starter boost setting to over-volt charge it for a few minutes and tickle it back to life, but the margin between success and failure (deformed case) is pretty small.
 
Sulfated batteries are often shorted. Some of the sulfate falls off and goes to the bottom of the cell and shorts the plates. A shorted battery will not charge.
If you do get the engine started you'll see the ammeter go high and stay there.
 
I have a charger that has a desulfate function that will bring a totally flat battery back to life maybe 75% of the time, although they are usually noticeably weaker afterwards.
 
Some of the newer "smart" chargers will refuse to do anything if they don't detect any voltage. I've had to use a jump start pack to "jump" the battery for a few seconds to get the charger to start before. I have brought back a few batteries from totally dead to fully charged, the key seems to be using the lowest power charger you can. That said, if it's flat the prognosis is pretty bad.

There are sketchy tricks like this too:

One day I intend to try this.... with the battery outdoors and a set of jumper cables running indoors to put a wall between me and said sketchy science experiment.
 
I've learned this lesson the expensive way.... replacing far too many batteries before their time in my boat & a camper trailer we used to have. I'm almost embarrassed that it took so long for me to learn!
Now on all my occasional use toys I install battery post disconnect switches. It's the very first modification that I do. Any time I put it into storage, even if I think it's only going to be a couple days, I routinely disconnect the battery at the post.
I've read about some of these jump start and desulfication methods but have not actually tried them. In my experience even if a battery is reduced not to zero but near it even one time, then the battery has notably reduced capacity so I have doubts it'll work well enough to waste my time trying.
My rule of thumb....if the charge drops below 50-ish% SOC (for a typical starting battery), then I know that capacity is reduced. If the charge drops to near zero then I'll just go ahead and plan to replace it more or less right away even if it does respond to recharging. I have never had luck getting a zero Volt battery to work again using my normal chargers.
 
As stated above, most battery chargers will not charge a dead battery. Put another battery in parallel and hook up the charger.
Good chance it will work.
 
Robert W said:
batteries typically last 3 to 5 years on average. I typically replace mine around the four year mark Sometimes you can get longer Life out of them but From my experience they become Unreliable after four years.
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Depends a lot on the quality of the battery. The factory batteries in my combine just finished their 10th season. I've had them go as long as 12. Does seem like the bigger truck/tractor batteries last longer than car/pickup/motorcycle though. I'm unhappy if I get less than 5 in any case. Preventing deep discharges with shutoff switches has helped more then anything.
 
The lead-acid battery in my Civic Hybrid is warrantied for 8 years and 4 months. It blew me away when I saw that! The one I just replaced came within a few months of that. It probably would have limped along to the full warranty period if I hadn't left the ignition on too long without the engine running.
 
Jim K said:
Depends a lot on the quality of the battery.
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I think this is key plus a healthy electrical system and following OEM procedures. I've found on the consumer side the built quality, plate thickness, etc has changed just like the life span of consumer appliances, etc. Without the above most people throw money away and blame the battery. Just check PoA for all the "junk" battery stories.
 
Bell206 said:
I think this is key plus a healthy electrical system and following OEM procedures. I've found on the consumer side the built quality, plate thickness, etc has changed just like the life span of consumer appliances, etc. Without the above most people throw money away and blame the battery. Just check PoA for all the "junk" battery stories.
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Yup. Lots of batteries (and alternators) changed because the master and/or starter contactors were shot.
 
My RV batteries went to 0 volts, and my charger would not bring them back. Got a smart charger, same problem. Hooked up my old charger and put it on the jump start setting for a few minutes, then went back to the normal 10 amp setting and the batteries charged...
 
Not sure, but think the reason some wont start a charge at 0v is that it could mean the battery is frozen. Once a battery loses most of its charge, the electrolyte can freeze. Charging a frozen battery is a bad plan, as I understand it, because under some circumstances you can end up with some kind of sulfuric acid steam explosion. Just a thing to look out for when it's really cold out.
 
Necroposting on my own thread. No point beginning a new one.

Yep - damnit - I did it again.

A couple of months ago we did a visit to the beachhouse before the holidays would draw us away from the Southwest. The GSX-R has a new-ish battery (Spring 2022).

I ended up leaving my rather bright-LED voltmeter connected, and when we got here to Mexico, the battery was drawn to near zero.

I connected the Battery minder/charger, and will see how it recovers. If I get less than a year out of a battery, especially from my own negligence, I'll be disappointed.

Sigh.....

It was rainy here the past couple of days - waiting for things to dry out, then take 'er out for a ride.
 
Rgbeard said:
I connected the Battery minder/charger, and will see how it recovers.
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Find the OEM manual for your battery and follow their specific charging instructions if you want to try and save what is left of the battery. Most "battery minder" type chargers do not provide that same charging level as they are designed to only "mind" it. Same for aircraft charging systems. They are only designed to charge at a rate to recover normal use and not a complete discharge.
 
Bell206 said:
Find the OEM manual for your battery and follow their specific charging instructions if you want to try and save what is left of the battery. Most "battery minder" type chargers do not provide that same charging level as they are designed to only "mind" it. Same for aircraft charging systems. They are only designed to charge at a rate to recover normal use and not a complete discharge.
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yeah, that. I’m pretty sure there’s no Walmart motorcycle battery manual. If there was it’s deep in a Mexican landfill.

As far as the battery minder, mine is a more
Multi-purpose device. It has a charge feature, although I need to learn more about it.

As always your replies are reasonably spot-on.

I will report progress in the morning.
 
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Most smart chargers won’t initiate a charge unless there’s enough voltage to activate it. That’s when a boost start charger comes in handy. Boost it for a few minutes to zap some voltage into it, then switch to bulk charge. There’s a good chance you can resurrect the battery. Just beware not to boost too long, or you may overheat the battery and deform the case. Especially true with sealed AGM batteries.
 
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Rgbeard said:
As far as the battery minder, mine is a more
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This is when having a decent 10A charger around that has force charge and repair functions pays off. And most also float charge. Have "saved" a number of dead batteries using my Noco brand unit which has more than paid for itself. While you dont get it back 100% sometimes you can get a few more years out if it. The manual use is only to see if there are any charge limits so you dont hurt it again while trying to save it.

FYI: if you get a new vehicle charger just dont use it on your aircraft batteries.
 
Rgbeard said:
Necroposting on my own thread. No point beginning a new one.

Yep - damnit - I did it again.

A couple of months ago we did a visit to the beachhouse before the holidays would draw us away from the Southwest. The GSX-R has a new-ish battery (Spring 2022).

I ended up leaving my rather bright-LED voltmeter connected, and when we got here to Mexico, the battery was drawn to near zero.

I connected the Battery minder/charger, and will see how it recovers. If I get less than a year out of a battery, especially from my own negligence, I'll be disappointed.

Sigh.....

It was rainy here the past couple of days - waiting for things to dry out, then take 'er out for a ride.
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Have you considered getting a bike with a kickstarter? :D
 
This is a good "BatteryMinder"

167981_2000x2000.jpg


https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200332201_200332201
 
Something I've found I have to do with modern computer controlled battery chargers is "jump" a totally flat battery to get it start charging. The controller in a lot of these chargers won't start charging the battery unless it detects some voltage so either a jump starter pack or jumper cables and a good battery are needed to "jumpstart" the charging process.

A lead-acid battery going flat is pretty bad for it but sometimes they come around with a slow charge. Really annoying that you have to fool the "smart" chargers to do this.
 
When I was in the motorcycle biz we replaced 100 batteries a year, and did carb cleans on fifty or so bikes.
 
So I promised a little more detail.

Here in the motorcycle garage in Mex, I have one of these:

https://optimate1.com/om4/

It says the charge current is estimated right at 1A, and I'm pretty okay with that for a motorcycle battery. It'd take forever if I tried to use this on a car/light truck battery.
 
I made the mistake of getting an AGV battery for the Concours. It lasted about a year and a half.
 
So here’s a little more detail. In the photo, you can see the little blue-lighted voltmeter that I installed a year or two ago. A voltmeter is not something that’s included on the motorcycle and I wanted to see what’s going on just in case I lose a stator on a trip.

It seems that it draws 10 mA. And if I’m gone from this motorcycle for a couple of months that is enough to kill the battery.

It seems that my charging device has adequately brought the battery back to life. I came out today to check it and tomorrow I’m going to take it on a ride up to Tecate. It’s been a while since I’ve been there, and I need a doughnut.


9FD1FAED-5751-4E00-B804-54CF3429210D.jpeg C1E748D8-4D6D-4B9D-92CB-2F2FA085978E.jpeg
 
Rgbeard said:
So here’s a little more detail. In the photo, you can see the little blue-lighted voltmeter that I installed a year or two ago. A voltmeter is not something that’s included on the motorcycle and I wanted to see what’s going on just in case I lose a stator on a trip.

It seems that it draws 10 mA. And if I’m gone from this motorcycle for a couple of months that is enough to kill the battery.

It seems that my charging device has adequately brought the battery back to life. I came out today to check it and tomorrow I’m going to take it on a ride up to Tecate. It’s been a while since I’ve been there, and I need a doughnut.


View attachment 114596 View attachment 114597
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Tell me more about your GSXR, what year is it.

I also feel my 30 year old roll around charger is still necessary even with all the smart chargers made now a days. Like what has been mentioned I have saved some pretty dead battery's with my old fashioned charger that goes to 40 amps and has a starter circuit that really will shock some dead battery's back to life.
 
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Gary Ward said:
Tell me more about your GSXR, what year is it.

I also feel my 30 year old roll around charger is still necessary even with all the smart chargers made now a days. Like what has been mentioned I have saved some pretty dead battery's with my old fashioned charger that goes to 40 amps and has a starter circuit that really will shock some dead battery's back to life.
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My Gixxer is a 2003 1k. Tons of fun, easy power, stupid-fast.

I have owned it for about ten years and it’s ridden every single racetrack in the state of California.

Never thought I would be a Gixxer-boi, but I find myself a huge fan.
 
Looks great and I bet lots of fun. Be careful on it. I bet you get to ride places the rest of us can only dream about.
I was a fan back in the 90s. I drag raced a GSXR motor. Big block, big mukinis, orient express auto trans, air shifter, performance machine wheels, goodyear slicks the works. I was scared of the street but was comfortable at 138 mph at the drag strip. I also built 4 GSXR motors for 2 fellow racers.
Road racer? I would have loved to try that! Probably wouldn't be here now.
 
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