Battery Maintenance?

biteme · Post by **biteme** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 7:22 pm

Ive owned my boat for a year. My last trip out I noticed my batteries are going dead pretty fast. I bought some distilled water today and popped the tops not knowing what to expect. Well between both TM batts I used a half of a gallon, they were already had a full charge. Now what do I do now to get em in tip top shape?

MIKE TREMONT · Post by **MIKE TREMONT** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 7:31 pm

I would ask: Jay Liu's Service. Jay use to have some instructions on his site for boiling the plates in your batts that might be helpful.

I would just put a good charge on them and see if there is any improvement. If not it might be time for some new ones. Keep them topped off and I think will help in the future, but that goes without saying

.

How you doing Steve?

ash · Post by **ash** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 5:13 am

The issue is you do not want to add 1/2gallon of water, start doing smaller refills. Check the batts, once they go down that far your battery wont be 100% again. Perhaps there is some magic out there, but I am not aware of it....

biteme · Post by **biteme** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 5:40 pm

MIKE TREMONT wrote:I would ask: Jay Liu's Service. Jay use to have some instructions on his site for boiling the plates in your batts that might be helpful.

I would just put a good charge on them and see if there is any improvement. If not it might be time for some new ones. Keep them topped off and I think will help in the future, but that goes without saying .

How you doing Steve?

Not doing too bad, have a little one on the way. How are you? We should hit Folsom up sometime.
I just found a link about boiling them. Ill have to give it a try. I was out on CL today and it was not nice out. Batts lasted until 3pm. So not much improvement.

MIKE TREMONT · Post by **MIKE TREMONT** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 8:02 pm

Folsom is FOUL!

If you do that boiling thing I would pull the batts out of your boat. Sends acid all over the place. Hope it helps???

Little one on the way. Very cool!

DeltaDan · Post by **DeltaDan** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 8:18 pm

Bite- You can look around local for someone to test you battery acid levels with a battery hydrometer (they are cheap/reasonable to buy) ... And then perform a battery draw/load test to determine the condition of your batteries.

If the Load test works out- You can add an battery "Enhancement" with some water .... But that would all be depending on the hydrometer readings to get the correct amount of addative.

Best thing for my two cents ..... Keep using your battery's and checking/refilling once a month with not leaving the charger plugged in once the batteries are charged -- and then when it is time ~~ Move into a maintance free battery system.

DAKINE198 · Post by **DAKINE198** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 5:01 am

BPS sells "Battery Equalizer" prt#21-280-742-00
Drop this into the battery then put a "hot charge" on your battery to break up any sulfation on the cell plates. To do this you need to have a charger capable of doing a manual charge at 55amps. Disconnect the batteries and "hot charge" each battery individually take a voltage reading before and after each charge and 1hr after hot charge. Compare voltage drops. And it also a great idea to invest in a hydrometer to test specific gravity of each cell. Trojan battery website used to have a chart for specific gravity and voltage specs. Hope this helps...worked for me.