What brand batteries are the longest lasting.

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RichLo

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I stumbled on this last year and had a bunch of old dead batteries in the bed of my plow truck for weight so I decided to give it a shot. It actually worked on about 50% of the completely dead batteries I had! For the first time I actually have spare back-up batteries for my equipment

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Jnunez74

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I run 2-12 in subs on 5k ordinarily. I use a stock alternator which is less than ideal, but compensation come from my batteries. I will live and die for optima batteries following my experience with them. Battery abuse has become a pastime for me it seems, I ran through 4 batteries in a year and a half before I bit the $600 bullet but it was worth every single penny. It has been over 2 years of near constant abuse and they are still just as hot as the day I got them
 

Supercharged111

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I stumbled on this last year and had a bunch of old dead batteries in the bed of my plow truck for weight so I decided to give it a shot. It actually worked on about 50% of the completely dead batteries I had! For the first time I actually have spare back-up batteries for my equipment

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What's the difference between that and a 200A jump start function on a nice, old, dumb battery charger?
 

RichLo

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What's the difference between that and a 200A jump start function on a nice, old, dumb battery charger?
Not a thing, those old ones were just dumb transformers with no controls to bring the amperage down. But you cant buy those new anymore. Its the same as new transformer welders, I wouldn't trust a cheap inverter like what's in the video unless you know it's a throw-away unit.

Run the welder in DC mode, Electrode positive, ramp up the amperage until it starts boiling (around 80-100 amps for car batteries) and let it chug away for 5 mins. Let it cool, run a battery load tester for 10-20 sec to discharge it and repeat the process until you either fry a cell or the battery load tester tests out good after a 10 sec draw. Do all of this outdoors when there is a breeze blowing away from buildings and animals. One battery had a hydrogen pop 3 times and that is currently my best one of the bunch, its rated at 600CCA and tests out to over 1100 amps.

Edit, again, these were completely dead, sitting in a snow plow truck bed for years through multiple freezes and thaws. If you have a battery that just slowly died in a daily driver you could probably bring it back around with only 1 session on the welder. Your just baking off the oxide layer (or whatever that hard layer is) on the lead to expose fresh lead. As long as the acid didn't leak out you just have to add water, water evaporates, acid doesn't.
 
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Supercharged111

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Not a thing, those old ones were just dumb transformers with no controls to bring the amperage down. But you cant buy those new anymore. Its the same as new transformer welders, I wouldn't trust a cheap inverter like what's in the video unless you know it's a throw-away unit.

Run the welder in DC mode, Electrode positive, ramp up the amperage until it starts boiling (around 80-100 amps for car batteries) and let it chug away for 5 mins. Let it cool, run a battery load tester for 10-20 sec to discharge it and repeat the process until you either fry a cell or the battery load tester tests out good after a 10 sec draw. Do all of this outdoors when there is a breeze blowing away from buildings and animals. One battery had a hydrogen pop 3 times and that is currently my best one of the bunch, its rated at 600CCA and tests out to over 1100 amps.

Edit, again, these were completely dead, sitting in a snow plow truck bed for years through multiple freezes and thaws. If you have a battery that just slowly died in a daily driver you could probably bring it back around with only 1 session on the welder. Your just baking off the oxide layer (or whatever that hard layer is) on the lead to expose fresh lead. As long as the acid didn't leak out you just have to add water, water evaporates, acid doesn't.

The battery in my 1500 is being weird, but I have a couple others to try this on before that one as a proof of concept. My dad had an old school charger and it's mine now. It's beat to crap but it does what it's told and that's why I love it. Gonna hafta run grab some distilled water and give this a whirl!
 

AuroraGirl

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Not a thing, those old ones were just dumb transformers with no controls to bring the amperage down. But you cant buy those new anymore. Its the same as new transformer welders, I wouldn't trust a cheap inverter like what's in the video unless you know it's a throw-away unit.

Run the welder in DC mode, Electrode positive, ramp up the amperage until it starts boiling (around 80-100 amps for car batteries) and let it chug away for 5 mins. Let it cool, run a battery load tester for 10-20 sec to discharge it and repeat the process until you either fry a cell or the battery load tester tests out good after a 10 sec draw. Do all of this outdoors when there is a breeze blowing away from buildings and animals. One battery had a hydrogen pop 3 times and that is currently my best one of the bunch, its rated at 600CCA and tests out to over 1100 amps.

Edit, again, these were completely dead, sitting in a snow plow truck bed for years through multiple freezes and thaws. If you have a battery that just slowly died in a daily driver you could probably bring it back around with only 1 session on the welder. Your just baking off the oxide layer (or whatever that hard layer is) on the lead to expose fresh lead. As long as the acid didn't leak out you just have to add water, water evaporates, acid doesn't.
i would caution against doing this to frozen batteries, you get one broken internal substrate and yoiu can go POP
 

Caman96

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I got this MotoBatt Duel Bank tender for my 2 Atv’s or truck batteries, both 12v. It’s supposed to do all this:
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Never had any battery issues either, funny cause I just put one of original Atv batteries on the other day, it has been sitting in basement a couple of years, let it do it’s thing and 2 days later it’s fully charged.
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RichLo

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i would caution against doing this to frozen batteries, you get one broken internal substrate and yoiu can go POP

Yep, thats why you do it outdoors and away from anything important. I have the welding cables stretched as far as they can go with a barrier between the battery and welder. Ive had a few hydrogen pops (some call them explosions) from the off-gassing and static discharge spark. Also had a couple with shorted or open cells from freezing, those dont do anything, they just dont take a charge between those cells and only boil the cells that are intact. You just hold onto those for core's when buying new batteries, no saving them.
 
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