years ago when i was but a mear teenager, i was out of state and pretty much out of cash my battery took a crap. i found the dead cell and did the asprin thing, it actually worked, but i didn't push my luck, as soon as i could afford a new battery i replaced it in about a week. FWIW
There was a guy locally who would "refurbish" batteries. He'd sell them for like $15. As noted, they did work for a while. I imagine you could get some of your dead battery's to work again, for a while. Not long enough for the money saved IMO.
Believe it or not plain old table salt will "charge" a flat battery .....for awhile. I was at home and got told to rush out to an emergency during a blizzard. Jumped into my trusty cruiser to head out and noting but click click click. Call in and said battery is dead what do I do. All the local wreckers are tied up with the blizzard and all so no help. I asked if it was enough of an emergency to be worth a battery and they said hell yes. SOOOO remembered an old trick learned at mechanics school and popped off the caps and dumped a good pinch of table salt into the cells. WARNING the battery will start foaming and battery acid will be coming out the vents. But it got the battery charged enough to start the car and drive around for the next three or four hours until I could get back to the barracks and put in a new battery. One drawback is the foaming and battery acid spitting out the vents but a newspaper over the battery would eliminate that problem. A quick rinse with hose water cleaned off the reside from the battery inside the hood and in that short of time no problems with the paint. Don't know how long the battery would last past the 4 hours I drove it but it does work in an emergency situation.
I do the same exact thing, 5 years and its out and a new one is in. If I have any doubt to the date of a battery in a car that I have bought, it gets replaced too. You KNOW that they have a tendency to drop dead on the worst bitterly ball biting cold day of the year. Bob
There's this local family that the brothers and brother in laws started a company that reclaims old batteries ands refurbishes them with some kind of chemical. They have stores in Denver, Kansas City, and Lincoln. Been in business for over 20 years and have been very successful. Maybe it's the same stuff.
Here is a method, I found online... To restore the battery to full health, another technique (US patent 6,130,522) involves connecting a small load across the battery at a 2kHz rate. The effect is to impose a small step change in the charging current which supposedly cleans the plates of the battery.
use google to search for desulfate and you'll find lots of discussion about doing it with electricity. I think it's more effective for batteries that are not very old, but have been left sitting discharged, and won't hold much of a charge now. Old worn out batteries just need to be replaced.
I remember watching a TV show that had Jay Leno on it with one of his 100+ year old electric cars. He could actually disassemble the batteries (the original 100 some odd year old ones) clean the plates and holders, reassemble with new acid, and was good to go. Too bad things aren't that simple today.
The Jalopy Journal
