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08-13-2014, 11:03 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Aug 2014
Posts: 3
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Flooded lead-acid opsie and how to correct best?
OK, confession time and I need the wisdom from the list how to handle
this mess I created. Last night I was in a hurry and wanted to quickly water my pack since that was needed. So, I grabbed the first of the 3 gallons that I keep for watering, filled the auto-shutoff jug and started going through my pack. Two things happened, the first made a mess and the second is more serious: Because some battery boxes are between the frame rails, there are cross-members that are above the filling caps of some batteries, making access difficult so they can only be filled with the jug at an angle. Apparently having the jug at an angle can defeat the auto-shutoff because the jug kept on burping slowly (I thought that this was because it was at an angle and not running as fast as with the other better accessible cells) until I suddenly heard an agitated hissing from the baking soda on the top of the battery, being eaten by the overflowing acid from that cell. Oops. I have put extra baking sode around that fill hole after closing it carefully and I have since bought a plastic syringe with which I will remove some fluid from that cell and store it in a plastic bottle until enough water has evaporated from that cell to put the acid back in without overflowing. Anyone have a rule of thumb how much I should remove? until it is at the same level as the other cells filled with the auto-shutoff jug? The second issue is more disastrous and I can't still understand how I got so confused: after I used the 3 gallons to fill all batteries under the bed (the remaining 6 under the hood had to wait till I bought more water) I put the jug back at the shelf where I keep it.... and found the 3 gallons that I had purchased a couple months ago and stored there, near the auto-shutoff jug. They had been behind some wood for a project, so I had missed them earlier and I realized that I had used *plain tap water* to fill my batteries, because that is what I had used the old gallon jugs for - to store an emergency stash of drinking water... Quick calculation revealed that each cell received about 250ml of tap water, because I could fill almost 3 golf cart batteries with each filling of the 2 liter jug. Of course that is just a few percent of the volume of the cell, but I am wondering if the unwanted minerals in the electrolyte will cause premature damage to the cells (they are now 2 years old, 9,000 miles and I was hoping to go at least 1 or 2 more years with them, getting 15 or 20k miles out...) Do I need to have them emptied and refilled with clean acid or would the dissolved minerals not matter much in the grande scheme of things? I need to weigh my options and decide which route to go next & how much cost and benefit each would have. Your wisdom is appreciated!
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