Re: Fresh battery basics

>From: "Christopher James" [EMAIL PROTECTED]

>What do I need to do to begin using this item .

Didn't you get a bottle of battery electrolyte and an instruction sheet in the
box the battery came in?

Battery electrolyte is a 50% mix of distilled water and
sulfuric acid. If you didn't get a bottle of electrolyte with the battery, you
could buy a gallon of battery electrolyte from an auto parts store for a few
dollars, but how would you know how much electrolyte to put in each cell?

Maintenance-free batteries are not flooded cell batteries, the acid is trapped
near the plates (which are made of a different kind of lead than flooded cell
batteries use) so that hydrogen gas bubbles can't get away from the plates.
This keeps the battery from losing water, that's what makes it "maintenance
free"... 

>Along the top is a peel-away foil which says ' don't remove until fill' .

When I recently bought a Yuasa "sealed" battery, it had a plastic or foil sheet
across all six caps to keep junk out of the battery while it was in the box...

The precision-molded plastic acid container in the box had six filler necks
covered by the strip of caps which was later used to "seal" the battery...

Every drop of the acid supplied was necessary to fill the battery...

There were sharp plastic parts in the battery itself which pierce the six foil
pieces that kept the electrolyte from leaking out of the battery...

The instructions called for inverting the acid container and pushing it down on
the battery, breaking the foil, releasing the acid into the cells...

The instruction manual claimed that all of the acid was absorbed into the
separators and plates, that there was NO flowing acid in the cells...

Translation: it's NOT a flooded cell battery...

Then I had to let the battery stand for half an hour before trickle charging it
with the cap strip loosely installed in the filler holes...

There's a little sticker on the battery that tells how many amperes to trickle
charge the battery at. I have a tiny trickle charger that only puts out 600
milliamps...

Maintenance-free batteries have to be charged until the voltage reaches 12.8
volts...

Then the sealer cap had to be pressed firmly into the six filler holes, never
to be removed again...