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| Title: | SAILING |
| Notice: | Please read Note 2.* before participating in this conference |
| Moderator: | UNIFIX::BERENS |
|
| Created: | Wed Jul 01 1992 |
| Last Modified: | Mon Jun 02 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 2299 |
| Total number of notes: | 20724 |
1628.0. "Wierd (pun) battery....." by CSDPIE::THACKERAY () Sun Nov 18 1990 10:58
I feel like my battery has crossed through to an alternative universe
and warped back, but in reverse.
After two years of service, my 105 a/h marine battery, having recently
displayed a minor deterioration in a couple of its cells, has suddenly
reversed its polarity!! Although the battery was badly discharged when
I got to it yesterday to recharge it, when I connected it to the
battery charger, the meter on the charger went nutso, and I got a big
spark when I connected the terminals.
No, I didn't get them crossed.
After some minutes of confusion, I connected the terminals the WRONG
way, and the battery started charging, and displaying all the correct
characteristics!! By this time, I'm thinking that someone has played a
joke on me and reversed my charger connectors. So I went to one of my
other batteries, which I know is connected correctly because it's
driving the Loran-C OK.
Connecting the correct way, the battery is fine, the charger is fine!
Then I went to get a voltmeter.
Sure enough, my battery has reversed its polarity!!!!!!! Each cell,
although under poor charge, is roughly equivalent in specific gravity.
I haven't tried to charge the thing up fully yet, in this reversed
condition, because without knowing what strange chemical changes it has
undergone, I don't want to blow myself up.
Does anyone have any idea what is going on here? Or should I just
accept that there is a black hole inside my battery and carry on
regardless?
Befuddled,
Ray
| T.R | Title | User | Personal
Name | Date | Lines |
|---|
| 1628.1 | Interesting situation here | ATSE::GOODWIN | | Sat Nov 24 1990 08:58 | 33 |
| Years ago when I used to work in a radio/TV repair shop people came in
with bad car radios quite often. One case turned out to be a battery
charged up backwards. The car seemed to function normally (as far as
the driver could tell) except that the radio didn't work.
We questioned him about the car's recent repair history and it turned
out that he had recently exhausted his battery by leaving his lights
on, and then taken it to a service station to be charged. Right after
that was when the radio quit. Apparently the station connected their
mega-super-ampere charger in the wrong direction and let it run until
the battery didn't want any more. It charged up and functioned just
fine in the wrong polarity.
Funny thing is that in those days there were generators instead of
alternators, so they had no trouble switching polarity either.
Starters have wound fields and armatures, so no problem there either.
To fix his problem he just charged it back up the other way. I don't
know if it affected the battery life or not.
In your place I would just go ahead and charge it up the right way, but
first connect a load to it and let it run down so you don't screw up
your charger.
The more intriguing issue here is How on earth did it get charged
backwards in the first place??? I don't believe it's something that
can happen spontaneously. Something probably happened to cause it
sometime between when you discovered it and the last time it was
working correctly. During that time, was anything in the electrical
system changed at all? Or could anyone have connected a charger
backwards?
Dick
|
| 1628.2 | | CSTEAM::WAN_NOOR | | Sun Dec 02 1990 22:38 | 7 |
| It looks like the battery became reversed because there is a bad
cell and it got charged up by the others, but the wrong way, so
at one stage, the whole battery switched polarity.
This has been a topic from Ripley's "Believe it or not"!
Ray
|