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how to recover from battery maintence blunder

bryan_machine

Diamond
Joined
Jun 16, 2006
Location
Near Seattle
<snip long list of excuses, some quite valid, involving heat, pandemic, general distractions>

My little red forklift wouldn't charge. Examination of batteries reveals 0 water. Clearly bad. So I fill them up with filtered water (the RO/UV/Carbon stuff you get at the grocery store)

The control panel lights up now, but attempting to charge the forklift gives an inscrutable error code.

Should I have used battery acid instead of water? Should I try again in a few days? Pump out some part of the water and put battery acid in? Some other idea?
 
unless the electrolyte leaked out adding only water is correct.

The trouble with chargers is the smarter the unit the more likely it is to get into an error mode and refuse to charge.

Let it sit and try again in a few days. If it still won't charge can you borrow a "dumber" charger from a friend? Many times they will charge a severely distressed battery when a "smart" one won't even try.
 
Some chargers have too low a threshold for reading voltage from the "to be charged" battery before kicking on. You might try connecting a previously charged battery to the drained one and let the good battery pass on some of its charge, then reconnect the drained (but now reading a voltage) battery back to the charger.

Notes/disclaimers - wear PPE when dealing with batteries, including eye protection. Keep track of draw/heat on charging battery, including if using a regular battery - if a short exists, find cause or discard bad battery!
 
You might try using a standard 12v auto charger and charge 6 cells at a time for a few hours to just get enough charge to offset the no reading to allow your lift charger to reset and do its job.
 
OK, I finally put a voltmeter on it and got 17volts. Not good for a 36volt battery, but not 0. I now have a power supply that is in theory outputting 30volts and just under 4 amps. (Because no 36volt charger is at hand.) I will leave that for a while and see if the voltmeter reports a change. Assuming it goes up, I'll start testing it with the official charger - if you are all correct, at some voltage the charger should decide "OK" and actually charge it.

Thanks!
(I'll try to find this thread again and report on what really happened.)
 
You are a newbie on battery's, you need a hydrometer, check each cell for gravity, the charge voltage needs to be over 42 volts for a equalize charge for 4 or more hours. I would pay to read up on lead acid battery's (lots on the web)...Phil
 
So far it's cool to the touch. Spent a few minutes fiddling with the emissitivity on the IR thermometer, and then realized all that matters is change (does it heat up) - draw is down to <2 amps, and voltage on DMM (with charger off) is up around 24volts - so there is some hope.
 
OK, I got the voltage up to 29v or so, and now the factory charger does something instead of pouting ERR and sitting on its hands. I've been unable to find any documentation on what the symbols on the front of the charger mean (would guess some of them refer to rebalancing, etc.) Anyway, it was doing something, and there was lots of bubbling from the batteries (that would be normal, yes?) I unplugged it for the night, will carry on tomorrow when I can hang around and keep an eye on it.
(Temps have been quite cool, at least at the caps/covers etc.)

[And of course, in the time of pandemic, finding a hydrometer turns into a hassle.... Sigh...]

Happy Friday
 
Yes, bubbling in normal. Just don’t have any sparks or open flame around, there is hydrogen gas in those bubbles.
 
Ol' boy farmer trick, pop each cap and throw a couple Bayer aspirin in. Don't know how, but it does bring a battery back to life for awhile
 
Update - it charged for some 8 hours yesterday, eventually got hot so I did a STOP on the charger and unplugged it. (And opened the door, strong battery acid smell) It wasn't super scary hot, but it clearly had a temperature rise.

The charger is supposed to be quite automatic, but not sure I trust it.

The cells were still full of water (though some is bubbling out the top.)

I'll get hold of a hygrometer soon, and test operation soon, but the "put a dumb charger of some kind on it and raise the voltage to workable level" trick clearly worked.
 
OK, the forklift functions (for at least a few minutes) and the battery charger now turns itself off rather than running for hours and making everything hot - so it seems back to a usable state.

BUT

I guess I overfilled the dried out cells, and in the process of charging, liquid bubbled out and dripped onto the floor. It has etched part of the floor, I don't actually care about that.

What I do care about is a kind of "white dust" - not etching - looks almost like very faint chalk. I want to clean that up. (It was originally thick and slippery, at least got past that.)

A swifter isn't very effective - looks wet but "dusty" when try. Plain water with a sponge mop makes some progress, but very slow (would be at it for days.)

Is there some other trick to cleaning up this "battery residue dust"?
 
Here's some tips on dealing with batter acid: Garages - Batteries : OSH Answers

For your needs try pouring out baking soda (get it from the supermarket) over the spill zone, and clean up with water. Basically (is joke, da?) you're neutralizing the acid with the alkali to bring it and the water to a safe pH value (~6.5 to 8.5).

And yes, get the hydrometer asap and check each of the cells for the right concentrations. Also may want to measure (during charging) each of the battery cell units for uniform temps - if you see an excursion high or low you may have a bad cell.
 
This all, (except the aspirin comment, no offense), looks to be good info. I would only add that when adding water to the battery, ONLY add until the plates are covered by 1/4" at the most. If the battery is dead, the expansion generated by heat, and the chemical transfer process of charging will cause what you have, a haz-mess. (I work on, mostly, electric forklifts for a living. I'm just on this site due to my cast iron addiction, lol.)
 
Also, charging a little used battery monthly will help slow sulfation, which will shorten the life of the battery, charging too often isn't good for it either, keep the top clean, use baking soda & water, and always unplug it from the machine when done.

Ted
 
If the battery is not in the machine, do not leave it set on the concrete floor, will discharge. Put it on a dry piece of wood or plastic. Also, someone mentioned adding acid to the water solution already in the battery, it my understanding adding acid to water is dangerous, will explode. Stay safe.

JH
 
Batteries can be simple.

Apply ohms law...

36 volt unit is 18 cells at 2 volts each.

While it is charging there is charge current through 18 identical "jars".

Think resistors...

All in series must have equal current.

Check voltage across each jar while charging.

The lower resistance jars will be lower voltage drop.

If you know the current you can determine the resistance.

Voltage below 1.75 (boltage considered at full discharge) is real dead and those above 2.25 (voltage fully charged)are likely sulfate.

You can place a 6 or 12 volt charger across smaller group of cells to increase current in the higher voltage ones but be careful to not over do it

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
 








 
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