On Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:01:56 -0700 (PDT), rabiticide
<rabiticide@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>I was charging my battery over the weekend and checked it last night
>to find the battery dead as a doornail. Upon examination, the battery
>is completely dry. I'm guessing it was overcharged and the water
>boiled away but it shouldn't've 'cause it's an "automatic battery
>charger" that's designed to stop charging when it's done...
>
>So, do I just add distilled H2O? Will that work? I have to walk to the
>store 1.5 miles (2.5 km) away and that's a long way to carry 1 gallon
>(4? L) of water...
I assume that this is a car battery of some kind where you can open up
the holes and look inside? It might have been dry or close to it
before you started charging and you should have looked before starting
the charging cycle on it.
And yes, you do want to add _distilled_ water. I gather you don't
want to walk to the store just to drag back a gallon of it if there is
another option.
"Automatic" chargers doesn't mean much, except that they are supposed
to be easy to use -- which says little about their quality as a
charger or what they might do when faced with a battery that isn't in
reasonable condition to start with.
Water under the bridge, though. You are now faced with a dead battery
that is basically dry inside and has been attached to a charger for a
weekend of charging which was started, apparently, without the battery
being in good condition to start or else where the charger itself may
have damaged the battery (or some combo of those.) In other words,
the battery's condition itself is in serious question now and there is
no certainty that distilled water will restore it. I also gather that
this is the car battery for your only trans****ation means, which is
why you need to walk to the store.
Normally, fresh lead acid batteries have nice clean lead plates with a
solution of H2SO4 (sulfuric acid, which is a thickish liquid in pure
form at standard temperature and pressure) and H2O (water.) I recall
vaguely that H2SO4 boils around 300C, or so. H20 at 100C, obviously.
So if you boiled off the water with the charger, it might leave the
H2SO4 still inside the battery. If that were the case, and assuming
that the lead plates themselves weren't shorting out each other by way
of poor regrowth, you might be able to recover your battery by adding
distilled water to it. But you seem to say that it is _dry_, and this
implies to me that you might also have boiled away the H2SO4, as well.
In that case, I'm not sure what to suggest. In the best of cases
then, you'd still need a supply of H2SO4 as well as the distilled
water. Which means just getting some water won't help a lot.
I'd probably just get some tap water, let it sit in the open for a few
hours to allow some of the added chlorine (or not, your choice) to
leave, and then use that in your battery and just plan on replacing
it, if you are lucky enough to get it working at all. Either way, I
think you are facing replacing your current battery, though. It's
probably not wise for your only source of trans****tation to be
depending on a battery that has been through this kind of trauma.
Jon
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