Re: To charge or not to charge
Here's a little history for you.<br /><br />Not to many years (60's~70's) ago all lead/acid batterys were sold dry. By that I mean that they had no electrolite in them. When you bought a battery you generally had two choices in your purchase. First; you could have the electrolite added by the dealer, in which case they would then put it on a charger for a couple of hours before you took the battery, or more likely before they installed it for you. Second; you could take the dry battery home with you, along with a container full of battery acid, and add the acid yourself and then charge it before you used it. An awful lot of extra battery acid was dumped on yards or down stormwater sewers in those days.<br /><br />The reasons manufacturers sold batterys that way was that self discharge was a much more serious problem with the old rubberized cases than the plastic ones they use today and the caps leaked like burlap sacks. Trying to ship a battery with the juice in it was an invitation for disaster. <br /><br />Now days virtually all batterys sold in the general retail outlets are sold wet. They are filled with electrolite and charged at the factory and then shipped. There are some batterys that are still sold dry, but in fact even those have some electrolite in them, I am told.<br /><br />Batterys still self discharge of course. I have been given a bunch of different numbers for the rate, but all of them come in somewhere between 1% and 3% per month. I am inclined to believe the higher number. Fully charge a brand new battery and then set it on a shelf for a couple of years and it will go completely dead. Let it set on a shelf for a couple of months and it will loose some charge.<br /><br />It is because they self discharge that you should always look at the date stamp on the battery to see when it was manufactured. You did look didn't you? I know guys who buy a lot of batterys that won't touch one that is over 3 months old. The reason is pretty straight forward. <br /><br />The two things that kill more batterys (other than gel cells) more often than anything else are owners who don't keep the electrolite level up and batterys that are left in a state of partial discharge. Doing either of those things - letting it run dry or letting it sit half dead - will absolutly kill a battery beyond saving. <br /><br />The battery you bought should have had very close to a 100% charge the moment you took it off the shelf. To be 100% discharged, or anywher near it, it had to have either internal damage or have sat on a shelf for a very long time. If it has internal damage then you bought a dud and it should go back. If it was totally discharged - unless you used a time machine to have gone back 30 years to buy it - then it was damaged beyond repair (recharging successfully) during its time on the shelf.<br /><br />That is why I said take it back. If you decide to recharge it, and you are successful, and then use it you should start saving your money right now for a replacement, because that thing isn't going to get you half way though the summer.<br /><br />I'm just trying to make this clear to you and anyone else who finds themselves in a similar situation. Take that battery back. You got screwed on the sale. Whenever possible try to buy your batterys from a place that has a high turnover. I am no great fan of Wally World, but they do in fact have that high turnover. That's why I recommend their batterys so often, that and the fact that they are made by Johnson Controls, the same people who make the exact same batterys sold under a bunch of different names, usually at much higher prices. It is very difficult to find a battery on the rack at a Wall Mart that is over about 3 months old. The same can not be said for a lot of automotive parts stores or private dealers.<br /><br />Thom
