Dead battery

[1930]

My Kubota’s only a couple/few years old and already a dead battery, by chance my ranger battery is on it’s last leg, my riding lawnmower battery is kaput and I have a stack of other dead batteries.
This guy

claims that this charger will fix any and all dead and depleted batteries and he has over 6000 comments supporting his statement.
( didn’t read all 6000 but didn’t see anything contradictory)
Charger is over 300 bucks…….. I don’t believe that 6000 viewers of his video has a 300 plus dollar charger so what do you guys think?

 

[deserteagle71]

Scam. No battery charger can "fix" a battery. A battery that is still fairly new can be revived to an extent but not to "new" specs. A battery that is beyond its life span and truly dead cannot be revived. If that were so, somebody would be buying up old batteries and "reviving" them to sell again.

If you have equipment that is not used every day then you need to invest in battery maintainers that will keep the battery topped off and in top condition. I bet I have at least a dozen of them...on both tractors, on my motorcycle, and everything else I don't use daily. Since I started using them my batteries last 2X what they used to.

 

[oosik]

I have a battery maintainer on all my seldom used equipment. Yes - it keeps the batteries topped up and they DO last longer.

What 1930 has found is obviously a scam. And a pretty expensive one at that.

 

[RjCorazza]

They appear to want it to look like a big shop charger, but it's only a 10 amp "dumb" charger. 10x (at least) more expensive than a comparable 10a charger.

 

[CliffordK]

Ok, so a new battery is pretty expensive. If this actually worked, the charger could pay for itself very quickly. Plus there may be an advantage of having a heavy duty "starter" charger.

Not all dead batteries are the same. If there is significant swelling of the battery case, that is a sign that the battery is pretty well toasted.

Sometimes a battery will come back to life for me, sometimes it won't. Frequently if I recover a badly discharged battery, it will work for a while but never be quite up to snuff.

What I haven't done is that 15 minutes on cycling. I usually end up trying a high power, then forgetting it and letting the battery cook... and thus kill it.

Anyway, it isn't the worst thing in the world to try... if one just has ordinary dead batteries, perhaps with one dead cell.

 

[Texasmark]

Scam. No battery charger can "fix" a battery. A battery that is still fairly new can be revived to an extent but not to "new" specs. A battery that is beyond its life span and truly dead cannot be revived. If that were so, somebody would be buying up old batteries and "reviving" them to sell again.

If you have equipment that is not used every day then you need to invest in battery maintainers that will keep the battery topped off and in top condition. I bet I have at least a dozen of them...on both tractors, on my motorcycle, and everything else I don't use daily. Since I started using them my batteries last 2X what they used to.

Hate to disagree with you but I had a co-worker, raised a farm boy, senior EE where I worked and a good friend, that decided that he'd have something to do and make some money.

He went to used car lots and collected old batteries and took them to his shop and drained the fluid, maybe something else unknown to me, installed new H2SO4 and H2O, charged them up and took them back to the used car lots for a price, and more batteries to rejuvenate.

He had a good business going for quite awhile till one day he had a string of batteries tied across 115V city utility power, rectified to DC, all charging simultaneously in a closed shop........yes it happened. Somewhere he disconnected something, generating a spark and the Hydrogen Gas that had filled the room went BOOM. He survived but quit that caper.

Now how long did those rejuvenated batteries last in these used cars, who knows. This is not fiction, a true account of a very talented electrical engineer and his capers.....of which there were many.

 

[DarkBlack]

Like previous stated, it depends on how discharged the battery is, and how long, for any chance of desulfation.
Batteries also fail for internal shorts, and internal wall cracking. No amount of electronic wizardry, and stories will rejuvenate the latter.

 

[ultrarunner]

Everyday walking to school I would walk past a battery rebuilder.

It was a one man shop with a small counter space and a covered open workspace in back like an open carport with plywood lined shelves and charging cables.

I asked how do you rebuild batteries and he showed me.

These were tar sealed so he would open and check the plates for thickness and sulfation.

Many batteries would have a bad cell from sediment accumulating on the case bottom and a simple clean and flush and high rate charge would bring back life.

I’m guessing always charging in an open area with a sea breeze prevented hydrogen from accumulating.

When he passed away the place sat for decades over lead concerns…

Always had a big rubber smock as clothes didn’t last a day!

 

[Jstpssng]

Years ago somebody was selling "renewed batteries" as the OP describes. He claimed that he had a special charger which would clean the plates while charging.
As others have stated above that may work in certain batteries but often there is internal damage.

I haven't heard anything from him in almost 40 years, it seems if it was a viable business many people would be doing it.

 

[rScotty]

It's true that some of the modern "smart chargers" have a "desulfation cycle" that seems to extend the life of a battery. And I've even had some batteries that have sat too long discharged - maybe one in eight - recover from clear flat enough to be worth using in non-essential equipment. But they never do hold more than about a quarter as much depth of charge as they did before.
Still, that's something.
So it may not be a complete scam.
But it's not enough in my book to be worth the $300 price.
After all, any regular low amp trickle charger will do the same or better. With a simple cheap trickle charger your battery will never be completely discharged - sitting discharged is what damages a battery the most.

We have about a fifteen batteries on equipment, a variety of trickle chargers, one good BatteryMinder smart charger... and of course the old fan-cooled heavy amp Snap-o roll-around charger for starting the big diesels if their battery goes completely flat in the winter. That rarely happens now that we trickle charge.

Get a new battery and a trickle charger. Buy any AGM sealed battery and it will save you the price difference over a wet cell just in cables and battery connectors over the life of the battery.
rScotty