by "MR2_FTW - Group J's resident Stig" (MR2_FTW)
Published 04/03/2017 at 14:19
by "MR2_FTW - Group J's resident Stig" (MR2_FTW)
Published 04/03/2017 at 14:19
Tags: mr2
; battery
; charging
; diy
STARS: 0
Last Sunday was the first autocross of the season, and that evening I put the MR2 in the garage still on the race tires since I didn’t have time to change them out. Fast forward to Thursday, I go in the garage to mess with a small compressor I got as a gift, when I notice that the key is still in the ignition. Odd.
I take a closer look and notice it’s turned to accessory. Shit. This battery has been stone dead for like 96 hours. I jump the car and let it run for like 40 minutes or so, then turn it off (all the way off this time dammit) and go to bed, thinking all was well.
Fast forward to yesterday afternoon when I finally swap the street tires back onto the car. I finish up, then go to start the car and not even a click from the starter. I glance at the volt meter and notice it’s at like 4V. Great, now the battery won’t hold charge. I’ve killed it. The $200 Braille lightweight battery I just replaced in January last year (first one gave me several years of fantastic service) is dead as a doornail.
!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!
I naturally turn to the interwebs to see what is the best way of attempting to resuscitate one of these things. Apparently, according to Optima, there are two ways to try. You can take the bad battery and link it to a fully charged good battery in parallel (+ to +, - to -) and use a charger on that. This will kind of buffer the charging to the dead battery and can sometimes bring them back from the grave. The other method I saw was to use an AGM-friendly charger with a desulfate mode, which can sometimes recover dead cells in the battery if it’s just a sulfate issue.
So rather than immediately plunk down ANOTHER $200 for a replacement battery, I ordered one of these chargers and I’m going to give it a shot this week and see if I can save myself a couple bills. Wish me luck!
"Boosted2k - I Make Videos and Put Them on YouTube" (boosted-2k)
04/03/2017 at 14:25, STARS: 0
I feel your pain! I had the same thing happen to a perfectly good battery on my Viper. I had the hatch closed but not fully locked and the stupid peanut bulb in the trunk drained my battery stone dead all week. Went to take the car out the next weekend and not even a single light came on in the car when I got into it lol.
Tried trickle charging it on several different chargers to no avail. Ended up getting a new battery....
"Stapleface" (patrickgruden)
04/03/2017 at 14:32, STARS: 1
Is there an option to take it back to where you got it from? Tell them it’s dead? Whether through your fault or not, it shouldn’t be stone dead in 4 months.
"CB" (jrcb)
04/03/2017 at 14:36, STARS: 0
Gonna agree with Stapleface on this one. When I worked at Crappy Tire, we could do a full replacement on a battery as long as it couldn’t hold a charge and didn’t look physically damaged, no cost to the customer.
"MR2_FTW - Group J's resident Stig" (MR2_FTW)
04/03/2017 at 15:04, STARS: 0
I ordered it on Amazon. I also made a correction - January last year, not 3 months ago
"Variance" (Variance)
04/03/2017 at 15:06, STARS: 2
One thing to keep in mind is that, at idle, most cars don’t put out a lot of juice from the alternator; to really get some charge flowing into a battery, you need to hold at probably 2k+ RPM (a dead battery is like a huge resistor; you need to shove in a lot of voltage and amperage to get it to take a charge). I have a Bosch AGM battery that I let drain down to something like 6V once, and I was able to revive it by hooking it up parallel to the battery in a running car; after holding it at 2000-2500 RPM for 10-15 minutes, I was able to get the battery back up to 11+ volts, at which point I transferred it over to a maintainer to top it off.
"MR2_FTW - Group J's resident Stig" (MR2_FTW)
04/03/2017 at 15:09, STARS: 0
Made a correction - ordered in January 2016 not 2017. Apparently I’m dumb and can’t read or write dates correctly.
"CB" (jrcb)
04/03/2017 at 15:10, STARS: 0
How long is the warranty on it?
"Stapleface" (patrickgruden)
04/03/2017 at 15:13, STARS: 0
Oh. Damn. I assume not much you can do then. Aside from finding a local vendor and trading it in on a new one. Hope the charger works.
"Urambo Tauro" (urambotauro)
04/03/2017 at 16:17, STARS: 0
Yeah, hooking up a known good battery and charging them both in parallel is a pretty good technique. I’ve used my jump-box for that and it worked great.
Will the resurrected battery actually hold a sufficient charge afterward? Now that’s a crapshoot. Sometimes they do, sometimes it’s already too late. But it’s worth a shot.
"gawdzillla" (gawdzillla)
04/03/2017 at 16:33, STARS: 0
I am buying an AGM from Oreilly’s just because if this ever happens i can go to the store and swap it out.