Dead Battery Reclamation
 

Do any of you folks place any credence in the myriad of 'You-tube' videos touting the various ways one can recover and re-hab a dead 'lead-acid' battery? In my case - the water/acid solution had long dried up. A visual inspection of each cell showed the plates appeared to be in 'good' condition.

I'm wondering if I can clean, replace the water/acid electrolyte solution to get them to a point where I have a 12V power supply for bench testing. I somehow doubt I'll achieve any results approaching the 'cold-cranking' capacity of the original designed output. The batteries themselves are presently sitting filled with a baking soda & distilled water solution in the hopes of possibly cleaning the plates & removing some or any sulphonation that may be present.

In reality, it may not be worth the time & effort to try to recover some of their former usefulness, but I am most interested in the opinions & any suggestions members of the board may have.

Whadduya think?
Cheers
JB

I had an old timer tell me to put epson salt into the chambers and then charge it. Never tried it.

The structure of leaded plates gets sulfated with surface corrosion over time.

There is the urban myth of using a battery charger briefly to 'pop' that off the plates.
Sketchy...
Be very careful. 2Amp is better.

With additional air exposure? IDK.
Acid mixture is probably changed .
Safest bet is to buy a new battery.

I've spent 'some amount of time' trying the YouTube fixes. Zero success, now I just trade the old one in and buy a new battery.

What I have not tried is replacing the acid, I will do that eventually, but I also think any 'fix' will give you another year max, so what's the point?