Electrolyte Specific Gravity's Effect on Lifespan

Yes. With 1.0 your battery will last 72.1 years but will not store anything.

Just follow the guidelines and your battery will have a long life as expected. Is that your recovered battery?

Yes it is the recovered one. It has vastly improved from when I first got it.

Take it to a recycling center, get 5 bucks for it.

You might like to waste everything but I never throw stuff away that works.

Charging a battery with a battery is not a fast way and the end charge depends on the state of the batteries. Better charge your bike with a charger and 14.4 volts or 14.7 with Deep cycle.(DC) What is the capacity of the bike battery?

The bike battery consists of two separate battery packs. In series they are 37v at 20.4Ah To charge, I connect them in parallel which makes a 40.8 Ah battery at 18.5v.

The big lead acid can give me twice the charging power of my power supply. I only use it when I need to charge fast. When I get the battery into my shed with 800w of solar panels connected to it, the setup will be more ideal.

As you can see, I am replacing the caps with Irn Bru tops with a pinhole in them to let gas escape.

How are you charging an 18V battery with 12V?

Do you have a DCDC converter in there somewhere?

The Mega Turnigy 400w is the DC to DC converter and charger. In the picture it runs on the power supply.

Clear now. I admire your sense of adventure in the experiments you tinker with HH. Learning your own way. Bravo. I've noticed that you actually seem to be understanding more of what you're doing....you still need to work on giving more details to the forum in your postings.

I see nothing wrong with using the big battery as a charging source.

Resurrecting that battery was a good effort.

As to lowering the SG to reduce autonomy to gain longer cycle life. Not sure. But you have nothing to loose by having a go. Vented caps to replace the originals was a good move.

If you want ANY battery type to last long, never overcharge, never leave a charger connected unless you built it and KNOW that it will never overcharge.

But I have never seen a charger that didn't overcharge, because everyone wants a 100% full battery. I am happy with LA Batteries at a max of 70% capacity!!!

These infos are for LA Batteries, nominal 12 volt, but you can apply them to any size LA quite easily:-

I have applied standard LA values, but more correctly you should use the values that the manufacturer allows. They may vary slightly to what I have written.

Never charge to gassing. Never charge above 13.4 volts. This gives around 70% of capacity and very seldom will you need to add distilled water, even in summer.

Never leave on the charger, unless you built it yourself, self calibrated to stop charging at the correct point.

Never use a trickle charger.

Never use it where any gas accidentally may collect and explode.

Never smoke or have naked lights near ANY LA Battery.

Never leave a battery for longer than 24 hours at ANY voltage below 12.6 volts unless of the leisure or deep discharge type, which handle it far better. Better is to charge above 12.6 volts as quickly as possible.

Use goggles and do not have any metal jewelry of any sort on fingers, around wrists and necks.....even tools can cause massive currents if accidentally put across even a discharged battery.....OK, one at 0 volts not!!

Fully discharged batteries should be recharged as quickly as possible. Normal Car batteries do not like being deeply discharged, cheap ones can be defective due to a single deep discharge, even when new, if you are unlucky.....

I hope I haven't forgotten anything!!!

Best of luck.

Diluting the electrolyte will in effect reduce the chances of the lead sulfate reaching it's saturation point as the battery discharges. It will also aid in dissolving some of the lead sulfate that has precipitated out.

It will not extend a battery's life any more then one that been properly taken care of.