Rejuvinating 9 A/ H motorcycle battery

[rgviewer]

I got my Bedini SSG working last week and I have been able to charge a 18 volt and a 24 volt drill battery. It seems to be working good as far as I can tell. However I have been trying for 6 days to bring back my motorcycle battery. It will hold a sitting charge around 11.8 volts but quickly drops when I put a 300 mA load on the battery. While charging with the Bedini the charging tops out at 12.84 volts and hasn't gone any higher. I read that you need to charge, discharge, charge, discharge several times.. I wasn't seeing much of a rise in charging voltage or capacity voltage so I thought I needed to discharge longer. Tonight I accidentally discharged to 5 volts, hopefully I didn't kill the battery (its recharging now)

Im sure it is heavily sulfated but I figured that it being such a small battery I would have seen better results by now. I see it charging but I do not know if my Bedini SSG is actually working as a desulfator or am I just not doing it correctly or it is going to take longer? Or maybe my plates have shorted out.

I am trying to see the amperage going in and out to the battery. If I am reading my multimeter correctly while set to 10 amp mode I am seeing 0.55 coming from my 12 volt power source, and multi meter set at 10 amp mode going to battery it reads 0.24.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am getting anxious to start riding my motorcycle again, while trying not to have to buy a new battery.

[John_Koorn]

Hi rgviewer, welcome to the forum and good on you for getting your SG going.

it sounds like you have a shorted cell in your motorcycle battery. One way to tell is if you charge it up and the voltage tops out as you say, check the cells. The 5 good cells will be bubbling away and the shorted cell will not.

John K.

[rgviewer]

I thought that a sulftated battery will top out on voltage and the more you desulftate the battery the higher the standing voltage becomes. I don't want to sound like I am disagreeing with you as you know way more than me and have been doing this a lot longer, but I am just wanting to understand this all. I have another battery that will not even power a load and reads only 10.5 volts. It bubbles on some of the cells and I thought that the bubbling was a bad sign. What are some thiings I should look for that might tell me the battery maybe recovered and is just a sulfatted battery? Thanks again.

[rgviewer]

I re read my first post and I shouldn't have said that the voltage drops quickly on a 300 mA load. It powered the bulb for 4 hours and the sitting voltage is 12.2. Under load it drops to around 11.8 after 1 hour. Then after 4 hours it went to 5.5 volts. I very well know the battery may be bad and unrecoverable, but before I give up I thought I would ask some of you that have done this before. I also don't want to just waist time either on something that is hopeless. Thanks

[John_Koorn]

It depends on the battery. A sulfated battery will show I higher voltage under charge as the impedance of the cells is very high. As it desulfates and the impedance is lowered the voltage will drop and then raise again as the battery starts taking the charge. However a battery with one or more shorted cells is different, usually the cells that are not shorted will charge normally and start to off-gas (bubble) when the cell reaches about 2.5v. Off-gassing is part of the normal process and the gas released is hydrogen.
i thoroughly recommend you read the Battery Bible (google it) or get hold of Peter Lindemann's Battery Secrets DVD. These resources will explain the process a lot better than I can in a post.

John K.

[rgviewer]

Ok thanks for explaining it to me, like I said im very new and still learning. I didn't even realize I posted this in the advanced forum. I think I do have a shorted cell, because today it has a standing voltage of only 11.2 volts, and while charging my meter only shows 12.1. This is the worse my battery has shown. It was probably one of those too far gone, which I am sure all of you ran into at some time. Bummer.