Do you know why a battery becomes weak after some time?
A car lead acid battery loses its ability to generate electric charge due to a process known as sulfation.
A car battery generates electric current through a chemical reaction. Lead and lead dioxide, which are the active materials on the battery’s plates, react with sulfuric acid in the electrolyte to form lead sulfate.
When formed, the lead sulfate are very fine and can be converted back to lead. However, over a long period of time, fine lead sulfate will coat the battery’s plates causing less surface contact with the electrolyte.
When less battery plates surface are in contact with the electrolyte, less electric current will be generated by the battery. It will reach a point where the power output from the battery is insufficient to start a car engine.
The key to bringing a weak lead acid battery back to life is to remove the layer of lead sulfate from the battery plates. There are many ways to do so.
Lead Acid Battery Reconditioning Guide
If you don't want to spend money buying a new car battery, you can choose to recondition old ones.
Can all old or weak batteries be brought back to life?
That depends of a few factors. If the battery is damaged with a cracked casing, there is nothing much you can do.
If the battery is giving out a very low voltage because of old age and sulfation, there is a possibility it can be reconditioned into service life.
To know the proper process of reconditioning car batteries, check out the Reconditioning Battery guide by Les Oke.
Les and his family have been living off the power grid for more than 15 years. Living true to their green lifestyle, they commute using a pure electric vehicle (EV). An EV uses 15 - 20 units of deep cycle batteries.
To save cost, Les will pick up old batteries and recondition them. Doing so has saved him thousands of dollars. The Reconditioning Battery guide is Les Okes's years of experience reconditioning hundreds of batteries penned down.
From the manual, you do not only learn how to recondition a lead acid battery, Les has included steps on reconditioning other types of batteries such as:
- Deep cycle battery (marine battery)
- Li-Ion (laptop battery)
- Ni-Cd (rechargeable battery)
- Ni-MH (long life battery)