That Cap Fits Me Right Fine

[ta240]

....A large discharge like this can be hard on the alternator and regulators ...

That was my first thought. Years ago when my job took me regularly to a guy that rebuilt starters and alternators he told me more than once that alternators were for maintaining a charge not charging a battery from dead.

The other thing that worries me with the old Z's with an AMP gauge and charging the battery from dead while driving is all that current for charging the battery back up is making a big loop through the inside of the car and the dash and actually through the amp gauge before getting to the battery.

Trevor

http://240Z.me

[EScanlon]

You know if you dump the old acid and put new acid in the battery will be nearly at full charge. Charging the car just resets the chemical reaction, the harsher the reaction the more desegregation of the metal. ...snp... I got in the habit of this because I'd pop the top off and check the plates if they were good and the amps went down I'd replace the acid, if worn out I'd replace the plates also.

There's something wrong about the math you propose.

Dumping the old acid and replacing with new, ignores the fact that you will have flushed a lot of the plate material out with the acid as well as having left the exchanged ions from the acid on the plate to further obstruct the chemical reaction of the new acid with the old plates. The end result may be that you have a complete 12 volts, but I'm more than sure that your capacity has decidedly dropped.

If this math were valid, then you could dump old acid, replace with new ad infinitum and always have a freshly charged battery.

Charging the battery doesn't quite "reset" the chemical reaction. Unfortunately there is the basic law of entropy that causes chemical reactions to degrade over time and there isn't a simple "reverse" process that restores everything back to the original state.

Lastly, what batteries were you working with that you could "pop the top off and check the plates" so well that you could in turn replace them? I've only seen this type of work done on industrial sized fork-lift batteries and then only in shops that specialized in this kind of work. Surely this is WAY beyond the capabilities of most home garages. The acid containment, disposal as well as the lead handling expertise required would require at least some form of EPA, OSHA, and other form of hazardous waste governing body oversight.

Many batteries nowdays are the "low-maintenance" or "maintenance-free" style, meaning that the end user need not address the scope of maintenance you're suggesting as well as possibly voiding whatever warranty might have been purchased when new.

Sears Auto as well as many other shops will do an Electrical Charging Check for a nominal fee (Sears charges $10, refundable on battery purchase) or sometimes free. They'll LOAD test your battery which will give you a better indication it's expected serviceability than any visual check could.

FWIW

E

[beermanpete]

Now I'm really confused because my composition was correct but when it posted all the spaces were cleared out, resulting in, well, something that made even less sense, but when I quoted for this reply, it is correct again.

Oh, technology!

This will probably end up striped of spaces again. But hell, I 'm curious.

Chris

Yes, I remember ASCII art. Showing my age, tsk, tsk.

HTML ignores extra spaces and extra line feeds. The code is text and will look correct in the editor but the web browser ignores the extra spaces. The HTML code for a space is " & n b s p ; " (without the spaces, more HTML issues just to explain the first one).

If I have it right your ASCII art should look like this:

            +

         +   +

       +        +

     +             +

   +                  +

 +                       +

+                          +

++++++++

                                     <=== Put my head here.

As for your battery, it will be fine. It is possible you caused some damage that will lead to shorter life but it won't die in a day or two unless it was already half in the bag. Forget about it and enjoy your car.

Edited September 3, 2011 by beermanpete

[Jetaway]

Yes, I remember ASCII art. Showing my age, tsk, tsk.

HTML ignores extra spaces and extra line feeds. The code is text and will look correct in the editor but the web browser ignores the extra spaces. The HTML code for a space is " & n b s p ; " (without the spaces, more HTML issues just to explain the first one).

If I have it right your ASCII art should look like this:

************+

*********+***+

*******+ *******+

*****+*************+

***+******************+

*+***********************+

+**************************+

++++++++

*************************************<=== Put my head here.

As for your battery, it will be fine. It is possible you caused some damage that will lead to shorter life but it won't die in a day or two unless it was already half in the bag. Forget about it and enjoy your car.

Pretty close, the line of ++++'s should go all the way across, actually, the sides should be steeper and more dunce-like. But will do, will do, and I learned something.

No problems so far with the battery, hopefully it will last so long enough that I forget having almost killing it off. It won't hurt that for the next eight months, the likely temperature extremes it will have to deal with is 30 -- 90, with the likely highs dropping steadily to 75 in three, four months.

Chris