Puffed Sealed Lead Acid batteries

[Metallover]

I recently traded a mini-bike roller for an old electric scooter. I took a look at the batteries and there's something wrong.





Are the batteries good anymore? The majorly puffed one has 5.75v and the other has 4.84v. Should I try charging them?

[suicideneil]

I personally wouldnt risk it- I imagine thats why the original order wanted rid of the scooter to begin with, damaged batts from hauling their overweight ass around... They are cheap enough to replace, or go with some custom A123 packs if you want real power and runtime.

[Metallover]

Originally Posted by suicideneil

I personally wouldnt risk it- I imagine thats why the original order wanted rid of the scooter to begin with, damaged batts from hauling their overweight ass around... They are cheap enough to replace, or go with some custom A123 packs if you want real power and runtime.

Funny thing is, the original owner was Huge!

I have two other identical batts I could use, but I wanted a 2s2p config. Oh well. I got a motor w/ freewheel and sprocket and a scooter basically for free. Check out the minibike thread to see the progress.

If anyone knows alot about sla's please chime in..

[J57ltr]

Their toast and you can try to charge them but it's not going to hold. I just got rid of abut 15 batteries that were bad. A couple were from the scooter I got and a bunch were from alarms and 4 were from UPS's that I got a while back.

Oh and if you have 2 12V batteries in series that would be 12S. LA and SLA batteries are 2V per cell, so they already are 6S1P

Jeff

[Metallover]

I am going to try running a desulfator through them right now. I use a peak car battery charger to charge my pb's, and it's got a desulfator function on it. Maybe this will do something?

Here's a little info on what a desulfator is if you are interested - http://hackaday.com/2009/02/07/desul...n-altoids-tin/

[stampede_dude]

If they are puffed, they are going to be bad, from my experience. Try to find a battery surplus locally, a guy I know locally buys batteries in bulk from hospitals and businesses who use them for battery backup and replace them periodically instead of waiting until they go bad. The batteries are almost always still good since they are rarely used, and you get get them dirt cheap. I got some 12V 7Ah batteries for only $4 a pop, you just have to find them. Craigslist is also a fairly good place to try to find batteries.

[MTBikerTim]

The only solution for that is Lipo

[eovnu87435ds]

I dont think a de-sulfator will help with fixing those batteries. also, for a normal car battery it takes over a month to completley desulfate. Just like a lipo, once the Pb battery is puffed, its a gonner...

I wouldn't screw around with those man, or your gonna pay dearly. I've messed with and replaced my clients server backup UPS systems with puffed batteries and its scary as hell to even mess with them when they grow that large, you just never know

[shaunjohnson]

the plates are corroded and there is nothing you can do about it.
that de-sulphur crap dont do crap all anyway.

[Metallover]

Where can I take the dead batteries? Maybe I can get some money for recycling it?

[J57ltr]

I took mine to a regular scrap yard they took batteries as well. for a Optima 2 18Ah and 3 5Ah batteries I got $9.

Jeff