Bring a small 12v battery back from the dead

[DTro]

For the second year in a row, I forgot to take the battery out of my snowmobile. I visited it the other day in storage and of course it's deader than a doornail.

My smart charger just give me a a fault light when I try to connect it and charge.

I really don't want to have to buy another battery this year. Is there anything I can try to resurrect this battery?

[Jeremy airjer W]

Charge it at a really low amp setting 1 to 2 amps max, the lower the better. It may be ready by the time the snow flies but now is the time to start!

[DTro]

Well I get a fault on 2 amps and that is the lowest setting on my charger.

Maybe my Marcum Charger?

[Jeremy airjer W]

Anything that will manually charge. The automatics will automatically detect the fault and shut down. The other thing you can try is piggy back it with another battery and see if the charger sees the fault. Once the dead battery starts to come to life (I should say if) you can continue to charge on its own. The manual charger will work a lot better for this.

[Shack]

Be careful not to do this too hard (or break the plastic housing), but drop it on the ground or garage floor a couple times. This loosens the plates or frees junk off them.

It has helped me before when trying to get a 12v battery to start charging. If you have a smart charger then do a battery recondition (de-sulfate). May take a day or so to compete, then charge.

Dropping the battery is a neat trick I found while ice fishing at night. Go figure! The crappies are biting like mad, but your battery is going low to almost no light. Take the battery outside the house and drop it on the ice (about 1-2' above the ice). Go back in, hook up LED or bulbs and bingo! Another half hour of fishing with light

[DTro]

Thanks for the tips.

Shack I tried the dropping thing and now I have battery acid everywhere

Nah just kidding

It didn't work though, so I jumped the battery to my boat battery and then hooked the charger to the small battery. I didn't get a fault, so maybe it will give it just enough charge to bring it back to life.

Thanks guys

[DTro]

Well a couple of hours later, I was able to disconnect the jumper and it's charging on it's own. Cool!

[Dave]

Just did this to an ATV battery last week. Charged it off my truck for a few minutes. Then it was enough of a zap to wake up the dead battery. The Smart Charger charged it the rest of the way.

[kerryd15]

If this is a battery that you can check the water in you can also put one aspirin in each cell and charge. Heard this from an old mechanic when my pickup battery was dead, still have to charge it, but instead of being dead again the next day, it ran for 2 more months. Finally changed it before winter, but it was still working.

[broken_line]

hmmm that battery trick is intersting.. really drop it??

[Whoaru99]

Most automatic and smart chargers won't start charging if the battery initial voltage is way low, which kind of sucks.

Put it on the manual setting for a while then switch to the auto or smart mode. If you don't have a manual setting, then you'll have to come up with some other way to get the battery voltage up a little bit.