Battery charging puzzle

[Ufatz]

I have not been around small boats much until last few years. Have two deep cycle 850cca batteries that appear to be totally dead. They were new four months ago. Put a new Shumacker charger on one today,properly connected etc. and the needle went clear off the peg to the right and stayed there. I KNOW if it goes over that far and then oscillates back and forth for a little bit that is a SEVERELY discharged battery but whats the deal with it STAYING all the way off the chart, so to speak?

[fishing tech]

Frozen? If so you don't want to charge with it being frozen. It could be low on water or internally shorted.

[Macgyver55]

If they were stored discharged they may have frozen. Its possible that if they froze it could have warped plates and shorted them.

[Ufatz]

Absolutely NOT frozen and not low on water. And they were new in November.

Bad charger??

[Big Buck Buster]

Does the charger have different Amp settings on it?

I am not familiar with that brand of charger.

I googled the Shumacker charger, and it came back with many different types of chargers.

What type do you have?

Maybe you have the amp setting too high. Try setting the amp setting lower till charged a bit, then turn it back up. This is if you have the type you can change the amp settings on.

[propster]

Could be sulfonated, or bad batteries.

[Macgyver55]

Did it do the same thing on both batteries? If so, try it on a known good battery and see what it does.

Like anything else you could have gotten a bad one, or they were just low and it is putting out the most it can.

[The_Duckslayer]

You have all the cables off the battery so you are chanrging the battery in a stand alone configuration correct? Sounds like some how they were discharged 100% and now may or may not come back to life. I guess I would take them back to where I got them and get replacements if nothing else. Should not go bad in 3 months. I would also check on what may have caused them to go so dead, maybe a short in the system they were connected to? Take care and N Joy the Hunt././Jimbo

[Ufatz]

It all turned out okay you guys. But it took TWO days to get those batteries back up to 100%. Still have not determined WHAT knocked them down so bad.

Thanks for replies.