Battery

L

Loyd Nix

Senior Member
I own a 29 Sport Coupe. I left the parking lights on overnight and the 6V battery went stone dead. I put a charger on it for 5 or 6 hours and charged it enough to start. The ammeter showed it was charging more than 20 amps and finally after several trips around town the reading went down to 10 amps but will not ease up to "0". The battery is less than three years old. Could running it all the way down have damaged it to where it will not take a full charge or should I keep driving it to see if it will get back to normal?
 
Loyd..draining the battery can shorten its life. But keep driving it as this will aid in reconditioning it. I use an alternator on my cars and have had good luck with with extending battery life. Hope this helps. Jeff
 
Thanks Loyd. We're both on the same page then. I've swapped out batteries from generator cars and have "improved" them this way. Good luck. Jeff
 
Loyd, you might want to acquire one of the low amp battery tenders. Hook that up when you're not driving the car and eventually the combination will bring the battery back as far as can be done. The tenders are small money and help a lot with avoiding issue with our 6v batteries.
 
I ran a 6 month old battery down, and it acted like yours, but eventually is working normal. However as mentioned, it has been damaged, and therefore, has a shortened life.
 
Once a battery is drained dead, you should put it on a trickle charger for 24 hours. Driving it, even with an alternator, is not adaquate. Depending on the age of the battery, you should plan on at least 10% reduced capacity when you drain it dead. Its also possible you could have a shorted cell. Check this by using a voltmeter on the battery after the 24 hour charge cycle.
 
As others have stated it will not charge fully using the alternator. Keep charging it with a
trickle charger.

Sewall
 
I have a + ground and generator on my Coupe, when I have charged the battery I disconnect the cables (+ and -) and hook up the charger. If I were to use a trickle charger.. would I have to disconnect the cables, or just connect + to +, and likewise for -..?
 
Also check the water level in your battery. After all the charging it will probably be down. Be careful about sparks when charging due to Hydrogen gas being generated. Slow charging usually brings them back, but not 100% after being drained down to zero.
 
kbinde2 said:
I have a + ground and generator on my Coupe, when I have charged the battery I disconnect the cables (+ and -) and hook up the charger. If I were to use a trickle charger.. would I have to disconnect the cables, or just connect + to +, and likewise for -..?
Click to expand...

Correct, just hook up the trickle charger + to + and - to -.
No need to disconnect the battery cables.
 
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