tlindly wrote in news:1180424314.345874.99050
@i38g2000prf.googlegroups.com:

show something less depending {I reckon} on their quality]

I love the "quality" hype. One plate is lead. One plate is lead
dioxide. The electrolyte is gauze soaked with a dilute solution of
H2SO4. The quality is in the label and plastic case.

Torn apart, and I have torn them apart, I don't see any quality inside.
You gotta go to a "quality" battery factory to believe it. Exide makes
"quality" batteries. Their plant was in Sumter, SC. It wasn't like a
laboratory, I can tell you. It's a dirty, nasty, smelly business making
batteries. You wouldn't wanna work there....(c; None of them are made
in a laboratory just for you.

A lead-acid battery "should stay at 13.6 for quite some time" is true. A
long time as it's dependent on chemistry. But, because they all are
built as cheaply as is humanly possible, no matter how good the quality
on the label is, they have impurities, notably iron, in them that self
discharge and eat areas of the plates. This doesn't harm the plates, but
consumes, irrecoverably, the acid...which is what makes a battery go
"dead". This happens to "new" batteries in the first 6 months, until the
impurities have been eaten away. Every month for the first 6 months, the
specific gravity of each cell should be measured, tracked and adjusted
back, after the battery has been fully, SLOWLY recharged, to 1.270
specific gravity, replacing the acid "local action" has eaten away.

Back in the diesel submarine days, Charleston Naval Shipyard had a
massive battery shop to restore and rebuild the boats' 6,250AH lead-acid
cells, that were about as tall as a man and 5' x 4' dimensions. The
batteries were made to drain, cut open and remove the plates/separator
structure, clean out and replace the core structure. It was something to
witness close up. The acid was purified and recycled, not dumped in the
river as some thought. They had a chemical plant to do just that. Once
rebuilt, the batteries were carefully fueled with purified acid, left to
"perk" a week, then taken to a massive gallery that was the shipyard's
battery charger room to be cycled and tested. The battery was cycled
from 1.270 to 1.180 through huge resistors three times to soften the
plates. Then, after a good recharging at 600A for 14 hours with a
thermometer in each cell of the gallery, load tested for AH capacity,
further exercising the new plates. Certified cells were then recharged
and gravity-adjusted back to 1.270 before being loaded onto many railroad
cars back to the boats in the drydocks. If you needed hydrogen to fill
your Hindenberg, it was vented out the top of the charging building,
along with GigaBTus of heat by massive fan arrays to prevent explosions.
They still had some impressive "accidents" over the years. An old friend
of mine worked in there for 35 years before retiring from supervision.
He taught me more about batteries than anyone else...lead-acid batteries.

One cool spectacle was that before the old plates could be sent off to
the salvage yard, to prevent salvage yard fires, a huge iron bar was
clamped across the terminals of the cell and left a day. This bar was
about 2" in diameter and glowed BLOOD RED for many, many hours....with
only the electrolyte that hadn't drained out of the separators laying
sideways on a pallet! It eventually stopped and the plates sent off to
salvage...to be recycled by the lead smelters back into battery beasts to
drive the fleet.

Larry
--
I had a Volkswagen Kombi bus camper. Under its back seat was a custom
built deep cycle 8D that filled the compartment, built in that battery
shop by my friend. Sometimes, the charging current from the little
Volkswagen's little, old fashioned, DC generator, dropped almost to 20A!
You could camp all weekend without charging, leaving all the lights on
like a beacon in the night way past midnight, to the amazement of the
tent campers armed with only flashlights....(c; I think I could have
driven the bus home on the starter if the engine failed to start...