battery worthless

jcworks

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According to the manual there is three lights. If the charging light is the one that is flashing the charger has gone into a desulfation mode. If it is the check light is flashing then the battery has had it.
Thanks Star. Yeah its the red "Check" light. So, its done for. No choice but bite the bullet and buy another one. I'll have this one tested at auto parts before I do though. It stinks that you can't get a lawn mower battery with a longer warranty than 6 months, not even an Interstate. They're probably all made in communist China. Ask me if I'm aggravated.
 

StarTech

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I know even Battery Plus here has dropped to a six month warranty. Lots of things are a lot crappier than they were before the Covid pandemic.
 

jcworks

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I know even Battery Plus here has dropped to a six month warranty. Lots of things are a lot crappier than they were before the Covid pandemic.
No idea why but the charger is showing 6.2 v now. If I'm not mistaken this charger turns itself on periodically at 2 amps. Perhaps by tomorrow it will show more volts. Who knows. Anyway, I checked around, Interstate is 6 mo warranty with full replacement - that part's good. And Ace Hardware carries Deka, one is 6mo. warranty, and for $10 more you get one with a 1 yr warranty. If its still crap by tomorrow I'll just get that one.
 
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bertsmobile1

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Once again the US government sells the population down the toilet
All Australian batteries come with a government mandated 12 month replacement warranty
Most then will add a further 1 to 3 years of pro-rata warranty.
Mower batteries should have thicker plates with 2 connections per plate to support it properly.
Car battery plates are held to the battery by a single tab on one corner because cars have suspension & smoother multi cylinder engine .
Down here Toro fitted spiral cell batteries which are mechanically the strongest , they are also the most expensive .
So if you want a good battery that will last as long as your mower does then find a spiral battery to fit in the space
 

Tiger Small Engine

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Once again the US government sells the population down the toilet
All Australian batteries come with a government mandated 12 month replacement warranty
Most then will add a further 1 to 3 years of pro-rata warranty.
Mower batteries should have thicker plates with 2 connections per plate to support it properly.
Car battery plates are held to the battery by a single tab on one corner because cars have suspension & smoother multi cylinder engine .
Down here Toro fitted spiral cell batteries which are mechanically the strongest , they are also the most expensive .
So if you want a good battery that will last as long as your mower does then find a spiral battery to fit in the space
Buy a battery with a minimum of 250 CCA (cold cranking amps).

New chargers will not recognize and begin charging batteries that are below 12 volts. Unless you have a charger like a Noco that will charge from one volt up. Use a multimeter and see how many volts you have. 12.75 is a fully charged battery. Obviously this doesn’t put a load on battery.

Use a 2 amp trickle charger once a month to charge battery, whether using equipment or not. Should get 4-5 years out of battery if maintained correctly.

Batteries today, lead acid, AGM, or lithium are very good and priced fairly for what they do. If you don’t keep them charged and kill them a few times, it will severely shorten or end their life.
 

jcworks

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Once again the US government sells the population down the toilet
All Australian batteries come with a government mandated 12 month replacement warranty
Most then will add a further 1 to 3 years of pro-rata warranty.
Mower batteries should have thicker plates with 2 connections per plate to support it properly.
Car battery plates are held to the battery by a single tab on one corner because cars have suspension & smoother multi cylinder engine .
Down here Toro fitted spiral cell batteries which are mechanically the strongest , they are also the most expensive .
So if you want a good battery that will last as long as your mower does then find a spiral battery to fit in the space
Buy a battery with a minimum of 250 CCA (cold cranking amps).

New chargers will not recognize and begin charging batteries that are below 12 volts. Unless you have a charger like a Noco that will charge from one volt up. Use a multimeter and see how many volts you have. 12.75 is a fully charged battery. Obviously this doesn’t put a load on battery.

Use a 2 amp trickle charger once a month to charge battery, whether using equipment or not. Should get 4-5 years out of battery if maintained correctly.

Batteries today, lead acid, AGM, or lithium are very good and priced fairly for what they do. If you don’t keep them charged and kill them a few times, it will severely shorten or end their life.
Tiger, I thought I'd been keeping it charged, or so I thought. Maybe the cold snaps 24F knocked it down. I left it on overnight, even though it showed to be not charging at all, and its back up now. 12.6v. I think maybe that charger kicks on a little bit when a battery is down so low, and then kicks off and when it does kick on its at 2amp. Overnight, I guess it did that enough that its up and going now.

Bert, don't get me started on our federal government here. lol. They are the cause of so many problems here in the US. The congress created hundreds, yes hundreds of federal agencies over the decades to "regulate" this or that. They make up their own rules, too often by radicals that gravitate in to positions of authority, which is why they applied for or were appointed to those positions. They pass their "rules" and in effect become law even though congress never passed a law, thereby the politicians can wipe their hands clean of it all. Some of its probably good; a lot is not good for the average citizen. I've been through that myself many years ago with the EPA "rules".
 
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jcworks

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UPDATE: I left the battery on trickle charge (2amp) all night. Yesterday when I first started this it registered 1 v on the charger. It finally got up to 4v and then 6v. But the charger kept kicking off. So, last night I just left the charger connected even though it was not showing to be charging. This morning its up to full charge and turning the motor over. Apparently these cold snaps down to 24F depleted the battery. From here on I'll just keep it on trickle when not in use. So, all is good I hope. Thanks for all your inputs, I appreciate that.
 

bertsmobile1

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A battery is a chemical reaction
All chemical reactions either generate or consume heat
So all of them have an ideal temperature range

making this worse is electrons have to travel through the paste material
Traveling around the surface of the grains of Pb in the paste shows up as voltage.
Traveling through the grains is storage capacity which isa solid state diffusing process and directly linked to temperature .

A lot of EV makers have just been hauled over the coals because their battery range was based on ideal battery temperature , not the actual running temperature .
finally smart chargers are actually very dumb
Back in the day, a dead flat battery would be hooked up to a manual charger , set to 18-24 volts @ 0.5 amps for am hour or so
Then you would check it .
If you gat 11V or better then you would lower the voltage to 14 V ( 13.5 if it was a really good charger ) @ whatever the charge rate was for that battery ( depends upon total plate surface area + battery chemistry ) and you would check it in a couple of hours adding demineralised water ( usually rain water ) as needed .
s
smart chargers are supposed to do this automatically but most can not so to them a bead flat battery appears as a fully charged battery so they refuse to charge them unless they have a manual "flat battery" setting .
 

Tiger Small Engine

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A battery is a chemical reaction
All chemical reactions either generate or consume heat
So all of them have an ideal temperature range

making this worse is electrons have to travel through the paste material
Traveling around the surface of the grains of Pb in the paste shows up as voltage.
Traveling through the grains is storage capacity which isa solid state diffusing process and directly linked to temperature .

A lot of EV makers have just been hauled over the coals because their battery range was based on ideal battery temperature , not the actual running temperature .
finally smart chargers are actually very dumb
Back in the day, a dead flat battery would be hooked up to a manual charger , set to 18-24 volts @ 0.5 amps for am hour or so
Then you would check it .
If you gat 11V or better then you would lower the voltage to 14 V ( 13.5 if it was a really good charger ) @ whatever the charge rate was for that battery ( depends upon total plate surface area + battery chemistry ) and you would check it in a couple of hours adding demineralised water ( usually rain water ) as needed .
s
smart chargers are supposed to do this automatically but most can not so to them a bead flat battery appears as a fully charged battery so they refuse to charge them unless they have a manual "flat battery" setting .


Exactly. So how you were able to charge a battery below 12 volts, much less 1volt, without a charger such as a Noco that has that capability, is beyond me, and doesn’t make sense.
 
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