Battery problem.

I bought a new battery and there's a problem. I had been wiring two old batteries pos to pos and neg to neg but they finally got too old.

Well i tried my new battery by itself but there just wasn't much juice. When i tried to wire it it with the better of my two old batteries there was a small spark on connecting it and there was a bubbling sound inside.

well i put it on a charger and the needle jumps opposite of charge and goes haywire, the store says it just needs a charge based on a battery tester, but i can't get them to listen that it won't charge.

if i had to guess it seems one of the cells is shorted? has anyone ever heard of something like this?

hard to to figure out which battery your talking about, the new one or old one. but anyway junk the old ones . the new one should crank better than the 2old ones anyhow. yes the cells can short out.the old one will discharge the new one.you dont say what your doin with these batts or what they are for.if you need more cranking power then hook 2 new ones in paralell.you dont say if the old batt. is still hooked up or not.when your getting this spark.also the new batt. may be defective.if your hooking the charger correctly to the new one and it is showing discharge, i would return it.its warranty and let them do the charging and load test.

I agree with Rustred, Do not hook up the old to the new. If the new seems weird, use a Volt meter on it to see if it is at voltage, and the polarity is as stated on the lid! I have seen bad new batteries many times. Jim

I find your post a little confusing BUT

Just because a battery is NEW does not mean it is GOOD

A new battery that is "fresh" should not need much charging.

If BOTH the old and new batteries have acess to the cells, buy and learn to use a hydrometer, and learn to use the thermometer compensation chart---specific gravity changes with temp.

Have the new one tested on a REAL load tester. Any tester that you can easily pick up with one hand is not a REAL load tester

When you say your needle is "going crazy," it is probably wise to check with a voltmeter-----

How low is the new battery voltage?

Any chance it got discharged and reverse charged?

If it is REALLY low or has a bad cell the charger needle may be "going nuts" because it's cycling on the internal breaker--they can go on/off similar to a flasher

Is it possible the charger blew a diode? Try the charger on a known good battery and see what it does.

I will add one more question, but I have most of the ones above as well. What in the world are you doing!?! Did you have two six volts hooked up in series to make 12 volts and now you hooked up one 12 volt instead? Then you tossed in a 6 volt??? You said pos to pos and neg to neg so I would assume/hope you hooked the new and old 12 volts together???
What tractor? What voltage? What batteries? What???

If you have a voltmeter, connect it to the new battery, red test lead to positive post and black test lead to negative post. If the read out on the voltmeter shows -12v (or -6v if it is a 6v battery), the new battery was charged reversed polarity(backwards). I"ve seen that done before. That could be why you heard bubbling when the batteries were hooked together. If one battery is reverse polarity, it would create a short. Also using a new battery with an old battery will pull the new one down, reducing the life of the new one. One battery will usually not do what 2 was doing unless it is nearly twice the capacity as the two combined. Good luck.

We are going through a situation at work with batteries. The corporate office and battery manufacturer have teamed up and determined our battery warranty rate was too high. They claim something like 30% of batteries warranteed test good. Now for consistency, all stores get a new hand held Midtronics tester that prints a pass/fail piece of paper including the voltage and CCA rating and CCA at time of test. The tester is a 4 or 500 dollar piece of technology that is supposed to be more accurate and reliable than a load tester. IF it was part of a test system with a load tester and built in charger with computer control, it could have the potential to solve all battery problems and concerns. Depending on the problem, it could be nothing more than a glorified multimeter!
We have yet to see what happens, but some batteries have already passed that the customers swear were bad. It"s a learning curve right now, so we are as pleasant as possible and offer to take it back/exchange under warranty if it gives more problems. I have a gut feeling that the testers are calibrated in the battery mfg"s favor. And unfortunately, the cost of warranty-ing comes out of the store and the employee"s performance evaluation (chance of a raise).

Good habit to get into is ask to test every battery at time of sale, and ask how long it"s been since date of manufacture.

good luck with yours!

-karl f
ps. I also concur those hand held "toasters" are not load testers.

(quoted from post at 22:26:37 01/10/10) ................... The corporate office and battery manufacturer have teamed up and determined our battery warranty rate was too high. ...............hand held Midtronics tester.................4 or 500 dollar piece of technology that is supposed to be more accurate and reliable than a load tester.

Click to expand...

Maybe "corporate" should come out to the field when a customer is stuck in xx*F weather with a bad battery and no survival suit.

I used to sell auto parts. I freely admit that many batteries are returned needlessly, but you have to balance "truth" against customer relations.

I once pulled a battery "out of the pile" (of cores) charged it, tested it, and put in in one of my rigs. Ran it two days, and it ended up with ZERO volts and normal specific gravity. My guess is that it had a loose internal connector, and whoever brought it in banged it around hard enough to make it temporarily reconnect

(quoted from post at 19:56:32 01/10/10) I will add one more question, but I have most of the ones above as well. What in the world are you doing!?! Did you have two six volts hooked up in series to make 12 volts and now you hooked up one 12 volt instead? Then you tossed in a 6 volt??? You said pos to pos and neg to neg so I would assume/hope you hooked the new and old 12 volts together???
What tractor? What voltage? What batteries? What???

Click to expand...

If I understood him correctly, he had pos to pos and neg to neg, which would mean he had them hooked up in parallel - not series. Therefore, voltage would stay the same as one battery alone. mike

I don't understand the part about the needle on the charger "jumped to the opposite of charge." Do you mean the ammeter pinned itself below zero on the left side? If you don't have a classic ammeter on your charger that goes from zero on the left to the max amps the charger puts out on the right, please tell us what you do have. And again, are charger and all 3 batteries 12 volt or is there some 6-volt mixed up in here?

I did some reading up on those new technology type battery testers a while back. Seem they some how are supposed to be able to tell if a battery is good wether it is charged or dead. Some thing about "impedence" I think and sending a small amount of current through the battery. Don't really remember right now. But , like you said , a good load tester will ,(not the fixed load type) with a good understanding of how to apply it and interpet the reading , show you if a battery is capable of supplying needed current at required voltage to do the job at hand. Just this morning I took my old Allen load tester out and checked a pair of batterys for customer. That particular carbon pile tester was in the shop when I started to work at that dealership in 1958. About ten years ago, the outfit that bought out the dealer, (I left shortly after they bought it) threw the tester out and one of the guys that still worked there took it home and as it didn't work any more said I could have it. Well, I got it fixed up again and although it isn't perfect, I still use it all the time for testing batteries as well as loading systems when testing and repairing alternators. Kind of like an old friend to me. Been through a lot together.
.

sorry, was busy. all are 12 volts. 826 international. my very basic charger has a meter that goes from 0 to 100 percent charged as it charges a battery. this battery just makes the needle go haywire and pegs the needle way away from 0 percent charged like the battery has a short in it or something. I went back and forth a couple of times to another battery that was a little discharged and my charger said about 80 percent like i expected. the store won't hook it up to a charger to see what i am saying. the battery tester at the store clamped on and said 876 cca available on a 925 cca battery and it said it needs a recharge. the cooking sound was after i hooked it in series, it sparked a little but i realized it might blow up. I guess i'll just lose the 100 bucks don't know what else to do.

There is such a thing as a battery with the POS and NEG terminals reversed. These will have an "R" at the end of their designiation. There have been cases where the wrong lid has been placed on the battery.

The way the charger behaves, it sounds like you're hooking it up to the charger backwards.

The way it behaved when you hooked it in PARALLEL to the other battery (not series!), it sounds like you hooked it up backwards.

Are you actually looking at the labels on the battery, or are you just assuming you know which is which (i.e. "positive is labeled + or POS" vs. "positive is always on the right").

Get yourself a voltmeter and test the battery's voltage. Put the red probe on the post you think is positive, and the black on the negative. If the meter reads a negative voltage (or the needle moves left), you've been hooking it up backwards right along.