How do you fix a battery that doesn’t hold a charge?

Deep cycle batteries are great but some of the cheaper batteries tend to need regular maintenance as they normally start losing their battery power. One of the various reasons your battery is not holding a charge is that the chemicals in the battery aren’t as reactive as they used to be. Although in most commonly used batteries, like sealed AGM batteries, there’s really not much you can do if your battery won’t hold a charge any longer. You can say the battery is dead and a better option would be to just buy a new battery.

But luckily, in case of flooded lead acid batteries, you can actually revive your battery by replacing the fluid inside it.

In fact, the battery reconditioning procedure is also very simple and straightforward. In this article we will discuss how to revive your dead flooded battery so that you can get a better performance out of it.  You can easily follow along the process we show you here or you can have your battery professionally repaired. Note that batteries can contain toxic chemicals that need to be dealt with carefully, so if you are unsure of what you need to do, you should definitely seek professional assistance.

Materials Needed

• Safety equipment.(gloves, glasses, mask, etc.)
• Plastic Funnel
• Multimeter
• Electrolyte

Procedure

Step 1: Safety first. Before you start working on your battery, make sure you have the proper safety equipment on. We recommend glasses and masks and rubber gloves to protect your hands.

Once you’re done with all this, you may process to the next step of the process.

Step 2: Now that you are ready to go, the first step is to clean your battery terminals. Rust or dirt can affect the readings you get from your battery. One of the ways you can clean your battery terminals is by using a sandpaper and filing away the rust or oxide layer formed. You can also use a battery cleaning fluid if you think you need it.

Step 3: Before you even start the treatment, we must find out if the battery is treatable at all. To check this, using a multimeter, check the battery potential difference across the two terminals. An important tip here is that make sure that you always connect the positive probe before you actually connect the ground probe. This prevents sparking or and is a safer way to operate in general. If there is very low or no potential at all, chances are that the battery is really dead and you should just get a new battery.

Step 4: Assuming you got a good enough voltage, (at least 10V or higher on regular 12V batteries) you can now start by removing the cell caps from all the cells. A battery is really a few cells connected in series. We must study these cells individually to be able to fix your battery properly.

Step 5: Now we check all the cells individually and note the color of the liquid in them and check the potential difference across them. One of the tools you can use is a hydrometer. It’ll let you check the level of the battery and perform other treatments easily. If you find dark color liquid or a low potential difference in any of the cells, you may have to replace the fluid inside it. Ideally, the cells should have a potential difference of around 2 volts each.

Step 6: If you feel the need to replace the liquid inside, carefully drain the old electrolyte from the battery into a plastic bucket and then using a funnel, replace the liquid inside. You can refill the battery with distilled water or the chemical as recommended by the battery manufacturer. Consider consulting a professional to figure out what kind of solution would be best for your battery.

And that’s all the steps. Once you’re done, trickle charge your battery over the next 24 hours and then check the battery voltage again.

Conclusion

In this article, we have discussed how to fix your battery if it doesn’t hold a charge even after proper recharging. We hope you found it informational.