Is my (new) battery pooched?

Damien

Well-Known Member
Hey Folks, so a couple of weeks ago I made a mistake. Was fixing a couple minor things on my boat, giving her a wash, testing out a few things etc. At the end of the day I left the key turned to 'on'. Didn't look back at my boat for 2-3 weeks.

Went to do a pre-trip check and noticed I wasn't getting power to anything and saw the key tipped to 'on'.

The battery was bought new last August. I hooked it up to my Nautilus smart charger and am getting the dreaded Flashing 888, "battery too dead to take a charge". Tried hooking the battery up overnight on a basic bench charger. Won't register a charge.

Any thoughts or is it best to simply drop ~$100 on a new cranking battery?
 
Do you have a battery hydrometer to test the cells? That would be my first starting point. If the specific gravity reads 1.12 or below on 2 or more cells, you may be looking at a new battery.
 
You are likely okay. Hook it up correctly to jumper cables and your vehicle for 15 minutes or so. After that your "smart" charger should do the job. They will not put out a charge voltage if the battery registers "dead" which is kinda dumb in my opinion.
 
what kinda warranty on that battery? Pro rated 36 month? if so I would just take it back to the retailer you bought it from and exchange it
 
When my truck batteries go dead(sitting for months on end) no charger will get them going unless I set it to 14.3v supply for 10-15 min. My noco smart charger is an absolute piece of junk and I reverted back to an old school mastercraft.
 
I bought it from Bernie at Alouette and I would rather buy a new one on my own accord than bother him with that. It is my fault.

That said, I did what Foxsea (thank-you) suggested and hooray! I ran it for 10-15 mins on jumpers from my car, then put it on an old school 'not smart' charger and it is now taking a charge. I will keep on there until bedtime and see where i'm at, but looks good so far!
 
You are likely okay. Hook it up correctly to jumper cables and your vehicle for 15 minutes or so. After that your "smart" charger should do the job. They will not put out a charge voltage if the battery registers "dead" which is kinda dumb in my opinion.

This is the correct way to do it, you may not need to even run your vehicle, just hook up the batteries together (pos to pos neg to neg). Charge it up as slow as your charger will permit
 
I've completely drained my house battery on a couple of occasions by forgetting to turn off my washdown pump. To be sure, this isn't good for a battery's longevity but it won't kill a battery usually.
 
Well, after giving a couple hours on the bench charger, then putting it on the Nautilus overnight it's reading full. The Nautilus ran through it's "conditioning the battery" cycle when I hooked it up. So all looks good, for now. But as ryanb mentioned, I probably took a bit of long term life off of it.

Which reminds me, how often do y'all change your house battery? I'd rather stay ahead of it than try to eek out an extra season when the time comes to replace.
 

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One of the things you can do to prolong the life of of a lead acid battery is to keep it charged up over winter with some type of battery maintainer. I understand that it is a bad idea to keep them stored on a cement platform. Don't actually know how valid that is but I store them on wood.
 
One of the things you can do to prolong the life of of a lead acid battery is to keep it charged up over winter with some type of battery maintainer. I understand that it is a bad idea to keep them stored on a cement platform. Don't actually know how valid that is but I store them on wood.

are the canadian tire battery tenders any good?
 
One of the things you can do to prolong the life of of a lead acid battery is to keep it charged up over winter with some type of battery maintainer. I understand that it is a bad idea to keep them stored on a cement platform. Don't actually know how valid that is but I store them on wood.
I'm pretty sure mythbusters busted that myth.
 
are the canadian tire battery tenders any good?

I bought one of those battery tenders a couple of years ago on sale of course. It has not given any problems so far, but it wont charge a battery from absolutely dead, and takes over 24 hours to charge up a nearly dead battery. It also seems to get very warm when in the charging mode. I have left it on my car when we went away for a month, no apparent electrolyte lose and battery was over 13volts when we got home. Undoubtedly there are better ones, but this works fine for my application
 
I bought one of those battery tenders a couple of years ago on sale of course. It has not given any problems so far, but it wont charge a battery from absolutely dead, and takes over 24 hours to charge up a nearly dead battery. It also seems to get very warm when in the charging mode. I have left it on my car when we went away for a month, no apparent electrolyte lose and battery was over 13volts when we got home. Undoubtedly there are better ones, but this works fine for my application

Thanks gungadin. i too bought one on sale and mainly want it to maintain my dual battery setup over the winter. my batteries are linked together with super heavy gauge wires...does it matter what terminals i connect it to? reason i ask is because someone told me to connect the charger to the battery “furthest away” from the shut off switch to get the best charge on both batteries
 
if your two batteries are hooked in parallel, pos to pos and neg to neg. Connect your pos cable to the pos terminal on one battery and the neg cable to the neg terminal of the other battery.

You would require a 24 volt charger if the batteries are hooked in series
 
if your two batteries are hooked in parallel, pos to pos and neg to neg. Connect your pos cable to the pos terminal on one battery and the neg cable to the neg terminal of the other battery.

You would require a 24 volt charger if the batteries are hooked in series

That is correct. Two batteries in parallel should always be charged with the cables attached to opposing negative and positive battery terminals on both batteries.
 
I bought one from ct 4 years ago, nautilus i think. Mounted it in the engine bay and it charges up to 3 batteries separately, works great.
 
I was told by the guys at Canadian Energy that the materials they make the batteries with now will allow you to sit them on concrete without doing any harm. When I was a kid leaving them on a concrete floor would drain them.
 
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