Batteries

ezguru

New Member
2 of my golf cart batteries are 11 years old which i revived with epsom salts and a desulfator,

I replaced the acid in my batteries with distilled water and dissolved epsom salt and left the charger on for two days. Flushed all that out then Then I desulfated the batteries for a week and now the hydrometer
reads 1.300 about like new batteries.. I could see progress everyday with the desulfator running..

please feel free to email me if you have questions
 

HotRodCarts

Cartaholic
Let us know how the batteries are holding up a month or two from now. My guess is you'll be buying new batteries...
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It will be interesting to see how your chemical/electrical approach works. Do keep us updated.

Did you get any solids out when you turned them upside down and flushed?

We just got the BatteryMINDer-36-Volt-27-Amp-Charger-Maintainer-Desulfator since I have had great success using desulfators on 12v batteries. Hopefully it will warm up some this weeked so we can get the cart out but our batteries are just a little over 4 years old.
 

ezguru

New Member
yes stuff came out when i flushed them,, I took a high pressure washer and blasted them
out.. as of now the 11 year old batteries are doing fine. i will keep u posted..
 

shook

New Member
Can the Battery Minder be used in place of the charger? good bad? How long would it take to charge says it 70% faster?
 
I need to check out the charger that came with our 2007 EZGO PDS cart. On the back it is labeled 36v 21a which I took to mean it was a 21 amp charger but even after a two hour ride it will only pop to 12 amp for a couple minutes then settle on 10 amps for a while then taper to zero which has taken 16 hours to do the automatic shutdown so I think it is getting the batteries fully charged.

The batterminder 36271 will do its full charging thing after the EZGO charger has shut off then just go into float mode which leads me to think the that bank is getting fully charged. The volt meter supports that but I have not pulled SG readings yet but I did buy some more cheap testers so I have one just for the cart.
 
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5652497/description.html

ezguru this is an interesting take on desulfation. I see China is making chargers based on the second half of this patent.

If it works just using a battery charger to get 5x the normal life of a deep cycle battery that would be a hit. I did see a battery with posts that can switch polarity by the user.

What they talk about for electrical vehicles is interesting. It was some posts in the off grid forums where I first heard of polarity reversing. I know it is not as easy as it sounds to discharge a 12 volt battery down to .5 volts.

Are your cart batteries still looking good after the treatment and starting to use the BatteryMINDer?
 

ezguru

New Member
Are your cart batteries still looking good after the treatment and starting to use the BatteryMINDer?
Im not familiar with polarity reversing,, never heard of it,, yes my 11 year old golf cart batteries
are doing fine,, last saturday 36 holes no problems. Im now giving my 2008 batteries the same
treatment.. its amazing how much gunk comes out of a battery when you flush it out...
 
I just found the patent info last night and it gave enough info to kind of feel my way forward. If one plans to try and follow that outline they should read and understand every warning because it pushing me to my limits on this first battery. Just got back from WM buying another headlight to help with the discharging.

It seems like it will take 24 hours after getting the battery down to about 4 volts and bolting a cable between + and - posts to get the battery to discharge down to under 1 volt. The warning about the burn off going into run away mode is NO joke. Since you have to do it with the caps off one needs to make sure they have a lot of distilled water on hand and a turkey baster to help keep the plates covered and the cooling working well.

It is about 50 outside where I am working and I wish it was 32 like last night. There is no question the gray build up on the plates is going some where. It is to go back into solution per the article for the most part.

That is good news about your desulfating success. I started to do your process and the BatteryMINDer thing than got the wild haired idea to try the reverse polarity thing on this very damaged old set. Hopefully I will know something by Monday.
 
While I just started in the polarity reversing project I have noticed one thing. There was space between the plates and insulation because in places can see down between them. They were all crammed together before when the + post was the + post. Now that the + post is becoming the - post the space is starting to open up.
 
As an update the polarity reversal desulfating continues to clean up the inside of the batteries. The first one I started is actually starting to recharge. The cheap $1.50 Specific Gravity battery tester from WM and O'Reilly's will not float 1 or 2 of the four balls.

In our case it seems to take about four days to get it from Zero volts back up to 12v in reversed polarity mode. I think a charger that you could keep the output around 14-15v at all times would be a plus.
 
I picked up a neat way to find problem cells with the temp gun during this battery polarity reversing project. Sweeping the gun along the long side of a charging battery can reveal cells that are cooler/hotter than other cells.

On the project I have the batteries load testing at about the same level but as before the polarity reversed. They seem to mirror about the same SG per cell in a relative sense. I have just started the discharge/recharge cycling to see if that will help desulfate them more.

I am finding it takes a while to get the batteries charged enough to get more than 14v output from the chargers. The automatics are OK and I am running the Desulf Mode on them a lot but after getting all four somewhat equal in condition I have reconnected them in parallel and have them on the manual 40 amp wheeled charger ($125-$150 price range home shop version). Now on the 40 amp setting the output is about 30 amps @ 14.5 volts on the 300ah bank. From what I read it is hard to top off a battery unless the charger will output over 14.2v.

In the coming weeks I will continue to cycle and see if performance/SG improves.

Knows at this point is that one can get a battery to change polarity. Second is that battery polarity reversal DOES desulfate a battery in a visible sense.

Unknow if polarity reversal is practical.

Keep in mind these four group 24 75ah marine batteries where cores that never go returned a few years ago and no water was showing in some of the cells.

A charger that you could adjust the current and voltage would be a plus I think in the early stages. When the battery is at 2 volts a common charger will not be putting out 14.2v + which is needed. A charger that was adjustable for 2 to 24 volt output would be nice but the one I read about was $500+

Just using one charger to charge the entire bank makes it more simple. The 40 amp setting is fine for when I am around but I like to drop the manual charger to 10 amp setting when I am going to be away from the building. The 10 amp setting on the 300 ah bank is just a bit more than a trickle charger.

Oh I was hard charging one on a solo charger and forgot to check on it for a while and the side of the case read 172 F degrees. Now I can see where some black plastic has dripped down on to an internal connector bar so I about lost that battery from the testing group. The funny part is its performance has improved some. It may have gone into run away mode but I thought it had already did the burn off stage when normally happens.

Currently I plan to do about 10 discharge/recharge cycles before I do any SG adjusting in the cells that will not make it up to 1.26 SG.
 
Guys I discharged the four batteries some today and put the charger on 10 amps (300 ah of batteries) and plan to leave them there for several days.

So far the same cells are weak as before the batteries polarity was reversed.

I can see they are less sulfated but so far these junk batteries are still junk. :)

The source I first posted said this process worked best when batteries lost 20% of their run time ability. These batteries had lost 60% of their run time then set unused for a few years.

I do plan to try it on a known good battery with all good cells but decreased run times with the same known load.
 
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