AGM Batteries, Can be brought back from the dead

[westgl]

AGM Batteries Are the Best batteries.

I recently have been playing with them, I had one on a battery tender, But the battery tender was no good, no output.

It had 5-6 volts. I put it on the charger, charger gave a code that the battery could not be charged, ie: the battery was bad, and would not accept a charge.

I had changed a few of my motorcycles over to AGM batteries, Two of them were Odyssey batteries.

One of the Odyssey batteries was a year old, charger would not charge it, as it would not accept a charge.

The second Odyssey Battery was over 5 years old, I bought the new Odyssey battery to replace this 5 year old Odyssey battery.

The 5 year old battery had 4 volts in it, it was sitting on concrete floor for a year.

In doing some research on line I came across some AGM info that said.

when a AGM battery sits without a (good) Battery tender to keep the voltage above 8-9 volt's it may not want to accept a charge, as something with in the battery gets coated and this is the charging problem.

I tried using a 10amp minimum charge to shock the battery, per several AGM Battery manufacturer suggestions.

I used the 10amp charge to get the 1 year old Odyssey battery up to 60 percent, then i switched it to 2 amp charge rate to charge it to 100%.

It held over night.

I charged the 6 Year Old Odyssey Battery at 10 amps till 60% then dropped to 2 amp, it too came back to 100% and held it over night.

I have a 1958' Corvette, that I put a Optima Battery in, It was at 4-volt's, it is only 2 year's old I will try the same method, and see if i can bring it back to life.

I thought i would pass this on.

The other trick was if you cannot get you charger to charge your battery to charge the AGM battery, try using a Known Good Battery that has at least 12 volts, use jumper cables across the good Battery and the dead AGM, once the jumper cables are on then try to put the charger on one of the batteries, this will at least let you charge it if could not before.

 

[slabghost]

Good info! Thanks for posting.

 

[dan filipi]

I tried all the various chargers I have to bring a AGM back that died after 1 year.

This battery was working fine until I used (abused) it to crank the parts bike starting it.
I think It probably overheated and shorted or broke connections inside because I was really working it hard while connected to a 12 amp charger.
At that time it suddenly dropped to 7 volts.
It now has less than 1 volt from sitting on concrete for over a year but I connected just now to a 12 amp auto charger.
The green light "full charge" is lit but there is over 12 volts at the terminals while connected.
I'll leave it connected (with good batteries in the smoke detector) and check on it every few hours to see if it's taking any.
I don't have a good auto battery to try the other trick, don't want to connect it together with the good bike battery for fear of damaging it.

 

[skiri251]

Interesting..

I have two Scorpion AGM batteries who died of natural causes (?) after two years. But I only own 2/6 amp manual charger other than battery tenders.

 

[mcgovern61]

Another important trick......DO NOT STORE BATTERIES ON CONCRETE! They will drain! Always put something non-conductive under then....rubber mat, piece of plywood, etc.

I keep my AGM in the bike, hooked up and started the bike at least every two weeks to keep the battery topped and it runs like a bear!

 

[westgl]

YES definitely,

Batteries must be stored above ground, IE: On a piece of wood so it is not directly on the ground, where it can discharge rapidly.

I thought mine was Garbage, and just had not had the time to get rid of it.

 

[ekvh]

Keep us posted as I have heard that this will get them to start a bike, but they fail to keep a charge for diminishing rates.

 

[westgl]

This may be true as i do not have a load tester, other than my bike.

All I can say at this point is they are holding a charge.

 

[dan filipi]

I have that dead agm on the charger.
Even though the green full charge light is on its putting out over 13 volts.
After sitting on it all night the battery reads 10.5 volts off the charger so maybe it WILL come back to life.
I never tried it connected this way with the charger showing full charge, will be interesting to see if it comes back to life.

 

[westgl]

I have other Batteries Nickle Cadmium, i realize they are not the same chemistry, But they were suggested to act the same by some of the AGM article that I read.

I use, to use the Nickle Cadium but now use LiPoly batteries, in my other hobbies (model RC Planes) they need to be charged several time's to reactivate the chemicals (even when new) inside them so that they work at 100%

I am thinking this may be a similar case.

I will know more in a few more days of testing.

I still have to pull my optima batt out of the 58' and try charging it this way. in the back yard.

One thing I can say is be careful when charging batteries.

I had a 72' Dodge Dart V8 auto, the car was like new. I took a drive to the store one day, no problems, granted this was with a wet lead acid battery.

But when i came out of the store, and tried to start the car BANG!!!!! a extremely loud explosion, I ducked down in the seat, I thought someone was shooting a shot gun right next to the car, it was that loud.

Then i saw a little bit of smoke come from under the hood.

The battery Exploded, it cracked the battery case all the way down the side and underneath it.

I would think that Battery acid must have sprayed everywhere under the hood.

It scared the ever loving schnitz out of me. I had to empty my shorts before calling for help. I bet who ever had to clean the parking lot was not happy about that. :roll:

 

[westgl]

Hey Dan,

How Old is that dead AGM battery that you have.

My Old Odyssey AGM Battery, that was sitting on the concrete for over a year has a date of 03-2006 on it, That would make it 6 years old.

 

[dan filipi]

There's a stamp in says 0012050.

Going by that I'd say December 2005 but I don't think I bought it in 05, maybe 5 years ago so it might have died more than a year ago.
Maybe it was sitting on the shelf a year or so before I bought it?

It has a plastic stick on label says Extreme Permaseal with a printed number at the base- XTAX24HL-BS

 

[westgl]

I put the vette's battery on the charger today.

It was at 4 volts, & 4% charge capacity.

It is a Oribital O6, not a optima as I stated above, lets see what happens

I checked on the two Odyssey's today,

Neither battery had a charger on them over night

The one year old Battery remains at 100% capacity & 12.76 volts, I am glad this one returned to full capacity

The 6 year Old battery dropped down to 65% Capacity & 12.3 volts.

The voltage on the 6 year old batt looks decent, but it's ability to hold capacity is not as good. I hope i can get it to come back to at least 85% capacity.

I will continue to charge this 6 year old battery as many different ways as i can think of to get that capacity up, next I will try putting it back on a 10amp rate and take it up to 90-100% and see what happens.

If that does not work then ill use 30 amps and see if that will work.

 

[dan filipi]

Odyssey says 15 volts or higher will make it gas and reduce its life or damage it, nothing to loose if it won't come back with a regular charge anyway

 

[dan filipi]

I'm curious, westgl.
How are you gauging the percentage charged, does your charger have a meter on it?

 

[westgl]

Yes Dan,

I have a Schumacher Pro Smart charger that can either be set to auto or will allow you to set parameters for charge.

It has a AGM & Gel setting's

It has capacity or percent of charge, and Rate and voltage, and a jumpstart feature.

The jump start feature is nice for the shop to just get something started in a hurry that has a dead battery, so that it can be moved to a better place you can work on it.

Sulfation is the term that was used, when a AGM battery voltage gets to low, then it will not accept a charge, at anything below 10 amps.

They said a Sulfated battery was a crystallization coating process that occurs internally at around 8 volts

 

[westgl]

I am checked my 98' gl1500se & my 83' gl1100

Both has AGM batt's.

My 99' has a wet cell, Ill check it's stat's later.

98' had a Xtreem Agm with 7 volts. This was hard to get back above 10volt and took a long time just like the Odyssey batts

83' had Power Sonic and said "Made in China" (they are probably all made in china) it had 10 volts, and bounced back very quickly as it was not that low. It stuck at 12.83 volts this was the highest of all.

The Orbital in the vette is having a tough time getting above 30% and 9.9 volts. Maybe that UFO crash landed

 

[Sidewinder]

Today's batteries won't be damaged by sitting on concrete. The cases are made of different materials than years ago and won't discharge as the old stuff did. Growing up in the 50's and 60's I was always warned of that and heeded the advice until a few years ago when I looked at batteries seriously for some other reasons.

Sulfation kills about 80% of all the lead acid batteries out there and many of those can be brought back to life. There are ways to de-sulfate them, all but one is messy, dangerous (to a degree) and a pain in the A$$. I de-sulfate them with a little pulse device a guy I know put together. Was going to make one my self but he is much better at making circuit boards and soldering them together so I just ponied up some cash for one of his. Now there are de-sulfaters on the market one can buy is you look around. Lot's of chargers have them built in nowadays. I have an old Vector digital charger that has a "Batt Recond" mode and all that is, is a de-sulfater pulsing the plates.

The sullfation process begins when the battery is not used. It skims over the plates and soon prevents normal operation without a regular use. Lead sulfate is non conductive and once the plates are covered you got a problem that can only be corrected by removing the sulfate. That's why the little trickle chargers are recommended for bikes that sit up for any period of time. This is truly a case of "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure'. Once they get coated and down below 8-9 volts it's a really long process. I can get one back but it takes about thirty days on the pulsator device to break up the sulfation.

There's some chemicals available to do the job quicker but it involves dumping the acid out, cleaning the plates chemically and re-introducing electrolyte. Be sure to wear a rubber suit. LOL

When you use a hydrometer (the glass tube with all the little balls) you're testing for the amount of sulfuric acid present in the electrolyte. If it is low, most will tell you you have a bad battery. (which for all practical purposes you do) but what you actually have to wonder is where did the sulfur go? Well it stuck to the plates in the form of sulfation. Get that off the plates and you not only have like new plates but the sulfuric acid is back in the system. Neat idea but not easy to accomplish.

Here's my little set up. That stupid case cost more than the components. :shock:

The trickle charger is just one of the cheap Harbor Freight jobs it supplys enough power to run the pulser. What happens is the little board there, sends a high frequency through the plates basically continuously vibrating the plates until the crystallized sulfate breaks off. This thread reminded me of that battery and I just hooked it up. It's pretty dead. It should take 4-5 weeks of sitting there (on the concrete) before it will take a charge and be usable. But hey, it was free and not old at all, just abused.

This all is reference to lead acid batteries (which most of these old bikes are found with) The AGM or "Glass Mat" batteries just have a glass mat stuffed down in the guts and are supposed to be about twice a hard to sulfate. They also cost about twice as much. Same process is going on down in the guts of the battery but from what I can see the mat just makes it take longer to sulfate.

The AGM's are being marketed by different Mfg. with all sorts of different names and some require different charge rate etc etc etc. Well, if you buy one and follow the charging maintenance schedule's then you are doing what you ought to have done with a regular lead acid battery to begin with, if you know what I mean.

I guess battery company's figure customers who are more aware and pay attention to their equipment will naturally follow the recommendations and naturally the battery will last longer. Plus, they can always say " you didn't follow warranty requirements" when you mess one up. Personally I think it's no more that a way to sell the same old tech with a different twist and make more money. (sorta like putting filters on cigarettes protecting you from yourself) :music: I'd rather have access to the electrolyte and be able to test it, than say an AGM or gel battery sealed. I have a cutter to actually get into sealed batteries. Been thinking about gutting an AGM but just haven't seen any practically in reviving one of those. It's guaranteed that it will have died from the same cause as all the rest.

Okay, I did go ON .... and ON talk about ....... :deadhorse:
It's just that some of these subjects have fascinated me for years..... this being one of them. Hey if you can't crank it, you can't ride it. and if you can't crank it and ride it at 3AM on a dark deserted road it becomes important right.

 

[Sidewinder]

[/quote]
Great info Sidewinder i would love to have the scematics for that toy. I think you are right on the mark and would love to try that on some of the ones that did not suffer Freezing and cracking bending the plates the curse of the north :thanks: :thanks: :thanks:[/quote]

Somewhere in the bowels of my computer I have the drawings in open source. I'll look around and PM you if I can find it.

 

[joedrum]

that is some good info well presented