Battery Curiosity

[HippoNZ]

Hi all
When I recently submarined my truck in a river it completely took the charge out of my batteries, no surprise I thought but what has surprised me is that they wont even hold a charge now. I've charged them up several times and the meter reads full but there is literally no life to them. The annoying part is was they were new batteries and I would have thought it would withstand it. Anybody know why??

[Maxhead]

Have you tried smart charging them?
Something like a Ctek or Projector 7 or 8 stage charger.

These can usually revive a dead battery

[the evil twin]

High currents thru the Battery can buckle the plates and cause all sorts of issues as opposed to the Battery just being steadily discharged which causes Sulphation amongst other things but leaves the battery physically intact.

The meter may be 'lying' as well. All they are is a Voltmeter and you need to leave the Battery at rest with no load for a few hours for that to be accurate. The quick and dirty way is when the Battery is "fully charrged", wack a compressor or work light or something on it and run it for like 1 minute then measure that battery voltage. A good battery will still be up around 12.7 or at least more than 12.6 but a dud battery that just has a surface charge wil be lower

If the Battery has been damaged internally no Charger will bring it back.

It will be worth at least a shot with a multi stage Charger as you never know your luck but if they do "appear" to come good then get a Capacity Test done ASAP to confirm they are back to near full capacity.

[Finly Owner]

Beaten again, I can agree with ET on this one. If when the batteries went under water, you had no terminal protector painted on, they would have had a short circuit. Also if the batteries were warm then the breathers in the caps may have drawn in non pure water adding to likeliness of self destruct ion happening inside battery cases.

Tim