The other day my neighbor asked if I could recycle an old car battery they had sitting around. It had been left out to bake in direct sunlight and freeze in the winter snows. She indicated the car battery was brand new but never installed. Turns out the, Everstart 75-3N battery was left sitting outside their garage for over three years. I of course said we could recycle it and then I wondered if this starting battery could be restored? Despite the obvious 'abuse' and lack of use, would we be able to revive a battery that was severely discharged and had sulfated for 3 straight years?
Setting the Stage
About the same time as we took possession of this dead car battery an industry friend called and asked if we would be willing to test a new battery conditioner produced by Battery Preserver. I said sure, I would give it an honest assessment and had just the battery to test it out on! I had never heard of BatteryPreserver.com before and tried to do a little research into there products as I waited for the BP-APD1 to arrive. My first impression was that the site was a little lacking, but I am biased when it comes to analyzing websites. More about this device later...
When we got the battery back to our facility we were surprised to see that the electrolyte had not evaporated. The acid mixture still covered the plates; definitely not what we were expecting after sitting in the blazing sun for 3 years! The voltage reading on 10-10-16 was 8.6V which is about what we expected. Oddly, nine days later, after sitting in our climate controlled building prior to being charged for the first time, it read 8.28 volts. The only difference was that we had lead lugs screwed on the front mounted terminals vs. sticking the prongs in the threaded holes previously. In spite of this modest detail, the variance did strike me as rather odd.
The Everstart 75-3N is rated for 750CCA at 32 degrees and 600 CCA at 0 degrees. We were not able to find accurate amp hour capacity numbers for this BCI Group 75 battery which measures 9.10 x 7.10 x 7.30 inches. However, when we compared it to other batteries in this physical size and or quality range we determined it cannot be below 25Ah or above 48Ah. The high end of 44-48Ah coming from premium sealed AGM starting batteries such as Optima's 8022-091 RedTop. Also, for comparison, a similar sized sealed lead acid or deep cycle battery (not designed for starting) comes in at around 50Ah (UB12500-L2 measuring 7.72 x 6.50 x 7.17).
Charger of Choice: The Charge Master CM6A
To charge this Walmart battery for the first time we decided to use the Charge Master CM6A made by Schauer. This brand of charger has a really good low voltage detection that seems to consistently beat competitors claims. We decided to remove the lead based side mount auto stud posts once the initial charge sequence was completed. We would replace them with The Battery Doctor solid brass dual threaded extenders. The idea was that this should help us later when we attached the desulfator which has eyelets.
At 10:59AM we connected the CM6A to the battery. We took regular voltage readings the rest of the day and monitored a steady increase in voltage. The voltage stayed below 13V until almost 2:00PM. Within an hour it had gone up another half volt and read 14.30 at 6:00PM when we left for the evening.
When we arrived back Monday the 31st we disconnected the charger and recorded a reading of 13.30 volts. We used PulseTech's 390PT Battery Analyzer to garner a simulated Cold Crank of 642 CCA. We were not expecting this initial reading to be so high! In any case we switched out the posts and attached the Battery Preserver BP-APD1.
Desulfator of Choice: The Battery Preserver BP-APD1
The dual threaded brass bolt we used was a standard power hookup for most all "GM" style side post batteries. They are 5/16" thread (8mm). The Battery Preserver eyelet is the exact same size--5/16" internal and 9/16" external dimension when measured with a ruler. To the unassuming person life should move forward without issue, right? Wrong! We could not get the eyelets to thread onto or fit around the brass studs threads. As long as no one touched them, we were barely able to get the eyelets to catch on the outer edge. This was not a confidence builder.
The BP-APD1 is an auto sensing 12-48V onboard battery desulfator. It measures 88 x 56 x 23mm and utilizes 20mA max working amps. Peak voltage is said to be between 60V and 100V with a frequency pulse of 10,000HZ. The auto cutoff for 12V batteries is set to 11.0 volts.
The desulfator correctly detected the presence of the 12V battery and indicated so by displaying the code C12. Within moments the unit started beeping while a red LED light flashed. The beeps seemed to follow a consistent pattern of 16 beeps at 1 second intervals before pausing for 4 seconds. I will be the first to express my displeasure with the high-pitched beeping. I could not stay and work in the same room.
The starting voltage when the BP-APD1 was attached was 12.95 volts. It was left on for a period of 3 days, which may not have been long enough when we consider other on-board desulfators take between 1-8 weeks to achieve noticeable results. During this time the battery dropped to 12.55 volts.
Did We Restore the Old Car Battery?
This is where things got interesting. The following morning we measured 194 CCA with the PulseTech 390PT Battery Analyzer. That is a 70% drop in cranking power! Thinking that can't be right I pulled out our 500A Carbon Pile load tester made by Universal Power Group. To use this device you have to dial in an amperage number that is 1/3 of the batteries known cold cranking amp or 3x the amp capacity. I selected 250 and 200 (one third of 750 and 600). The load voltages were 9.2V and 9.5V respectively. An automotive battery of this size should be coming in at a value well north of 10.0 volts under load.
The battery was placed back on the CM6A charger for about 5 hours and then retested. Even starting at full a 13.2 volts the CCA reading came in at 235 and the load voltages remained the same at 9.2V and 9.5V.
I was now getting concerned. Could this Battery Preserver have actually just destroyed the battery? It was time to dig deeper. I know that using only voltage and CCA is not the most effective measure of a batteries health. To gauge total health you need to evaluate the capacity.
To do this we used Pro Charging Systems BD6812 Battery Discharger. It can drain 6V, 8V and 12V automotive and deep cycle batteries. It records the starting voltage, time it took to fully discharge the battery to 10.5V, and total amps removed. Our first attempt at the end of the day November 4th took 30 minutes and 49 seconds and recorded 17 amps removed.
The Everstart battery was placed back on one of our favorite desulfating chargers, the XC100-P by PulseTech. Five days later we disconnected the charger and measured a voltage reading of 13.35V. The battery again loaded well below what we measured days earlier! The carbon pile loads came in at 9.2V and 9.6V while the digital version read 331 CCA.
It was at this point one of our newer employees walked by and suggested taking the brass lugs off and try taking a reading with the lead lugs. My initial thought was to chuckle, thinking the outcome should be about the same. But for the sake of consistency we did just that.
The brass terminal lugs were very warm to the touch. I would suggest much warmer than what I am used to working with. Moments after installing the lead threaded terminals we took some voltage readings. I couldn't believe my eyes! The carbon pile load numbers suddenly jumped to 10.2V and 10.4V while the digital reading indicated the battery now had 635 CCA. These numbers were consistent with what we recorded after the CM6A charged the battery for the first time.
The terminal type just opened up a whole new can of warms! We have touched on the importance of keeping your wiring uniform when paralleling batteries together because you don't want to create different resistance levels. I would have never imagined the terminal style would have such a major impact! The testing devices all reacted the same. The battery and testers did not change. The only difference was a few minutes of lost time and the brass/lead terminals. That raised a question of mechanic shops telling people there battery is bad when it may actually be fine. If the type of terminal interferes with the testers ability to accurately diagnose the battery then we have a huge problem on our hands! People are getting ripped off! We will have to investigate this further...
Back to the battery, we will continue to work with it to see if we can improve upon our initial findings. At this point the battery appears to be revived or at least on its way to being, dare I say, [fully] restored. We will put it in a vehicle and play around with the terminal type to see if we can determine if they have an impact in real life situations and not just on testing equipment. Stay tuned!
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