I went to start my Explorer the other day, and the battery was dead from sitting so long.
I put a battery charger on it, but I'm not getting anything...zero amps on the charger.
I've sanded all the corrosion from both contact points, down to shiny bare metal...still nothing.
I also have a battery tender, so I put that on. It has an LED to indicate charging...it's not lit.
Does this mean the battery is done for?
Well you could bring it into the auto parts store and let them test it, but it sure sounds dead to me. How old is it.
6 years.
I'm connecting the + to the battery's positive, and the - to a bolt head on the engine block.
I'll try cleaning again.
Are you by chance not connecting the charger directly to the battery terminals, but perhaps through another path like plugging it into a cigarette lighter socket?
If so, then look for a blown fuse in the cigarette lighter feed.
If you ARE connecting directly to the battery's terminals and it's still not drawing any current from the charger, then chances are good that one of the internal straps connecting the cells in series has snapped loose, i.e. the battery is junque. A battery which isn't broken but just won't "hold a charge" will draw SOME current from a charger.
Jeff
About what I thought. It's due.
I've never seen a bad battery show nothing on the charging meter. Possibly the battery discharged completely then froze and cracked internally. Is the outlet where you plugged in the chargers live?
Mitch wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
probably bone dry;no electrolyte left.
Most lead acid car batteries last abou 4 yrs,less in a hotter climate. So-called sealed,maintenance free batteries are not "sealed",and thus the electrolyte evaporates eventually.Often there are removable cell caps under a label od disguised as not removable,and you can keep the level up with distilled water.
I had one completely open once, at 2 years old. But if you turn on headlights charger should show action.
Sounds like a bad ground. Also a 6 year old battery is pushing the limit age-wise.I generally use a battery 2-4 years here in the Midwest then if it's still good I keep it charged and ready to back up the new one just in case.
Failure to draw charging current is commonly caused by (1) corroded connections, (2) extremely low electrolyte level, (3) severe sulphation, or (4) broken internal connection. A battery with any internal problem is in danger of rupturing if a high current source such as jumper cables or a high current charger is connected.
That battery is past its useful life and should be replaced.
Don Young
Not necessarily. Put your charger on it's lowest setting and turn the park lights on. If the battery is completely dead, as in dead as a doorknob, sometimes chargers won't charge. Turning the park lights on gives it something to do and sometimes gets the charging action going.
"Good" chargers won't turn on until they see a little voltage from the battery. It keeps the thing from shorting out if you just touch the leads together. I think it is really because the charge monitor uses the voltage from the battery to bootsrtrap itself up. A "cheap" charger doesn't have that problem, nor does jumper cables.
That may be part of your problem. Connect the negative clamp from the charger DIRECTLY to the battery negative post.v Same thing with the battery positive post and the charger positive clamp. Get the cables out of there. Get the cables off both the negative and positive posts and clean both posts THOROUGHLY before charging.
While its charging, clean the insides of the cables thoroughly.
Unless its totally dry (possible, but not likel) or unless the nternal battery connections are broken, it should show continuity though the battery, and ake a partial charge
Some "sealed" batteries can be refilled with electrolyte / distilled water. Some are not as "sealed" as you miht believe.
If an internal battery connection is broken, you have a boat anchor. A broken internal connection can't be "cured".
Have you used a good DVM to test internal continuity within the battery to see if there is a boken internal connection?
BTW, it won't kill you or bankrupt you if you rpelace a battery early.
But I think the idea was for you to get the answer for your question, so you would know more about this for the future.
Anotehr suggestion is to measure the voltage at the battery posts.
12.6 is fully charged, and it should be higher than that if the engine is running or there is a battery charger on it.I forget exactly, but I think 11.6, if that is before you connect the charger, would probably go higher, probably high enough. Regardless of where it started, if it got to 12.4 that might be enough to run the car. I don't remember numbers very well, but you can learn what the various number indicate.
Most apparently sealed lead acid car batteries can still have their caps pried off, 2 caps for 3 cells each. Best to use distilled water to refill. (There are a lot of truly sealed smaller batteries, including gel cells which are sealed. But there aren't too many sealed car batteries, and it probably says it in big letters if it is. After they came out, the battery caps on regular batteries, including iirc lo-maintenance batteries, were redisigned to make the batteries look like sealed ones. I think there is a narrow, barely noticeable,
1-inch slot at each end, one for each cap, if they are meant to come off.Fill until you see the meniscus, the place at the edge of the water where it curls up. When the water level is low, this is out of sight at the edge of the rectangular cell. When the water level is high enough, the water's as high as the round tube going down from the round hole, so you can see the curve up at the edge. That's meant to be the proper level for the water.
Not necessarily... Just after our second child was born in 1991, I decided it was time for a bigger car, and bought a 1984 Buick LeSabre (which we kept for another ten years and 150K miles). Somewhere around '96 or '97, the LeSabre needed a new battery. As I was taking the old one out, I got to thinking that I didn't remember changing the battery in that car before -- but I didn't think the car had a new battery when I bought it, either... hmmmm....
So I checked the date-of-manufacture code: October 1983.
AC-Delco. Original equipment. Guess which brand I bought for a replacement.
And we live in central Indiana, not exactly a kind environment for car batteries.
Wow! That's pretty impressive,and in a climate with temp extremes! My Dad did'nt like people to run the radio because He wanted the battery to last longer! Too strict for Me,,I'll run the radio on a jobsite(or a party)for hours on end just starting occasionally to charge.I have plug ins for scanner and radar detector and cellphone that occasionally are forgotton and remain plugged in for days.. I've heard the drycell car batteries are worth the extra $s,,any thoughts/expierience on that and will they perform better in sub-0 temps? A younger friend of My Sons' has a drycell battery that's about
6yo and He says it's going strong. Dean
If it is frozen now it would act as described.
More information than you want to know about batteries is at
-- bud--
But mommy I didn't know I wuz preggers...
Of course, it would be nice to know the voltage of the battery with the terminals unconnected, and the charger removed. Sounds like it froze last winter. If the battery voltage is less than 8 volts, it's likely never going to come back from the dead.
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