How to store batteries

[edpdx]

Last year I was having all these problems with my starter in the Blazer. I tried everything to chase the problem down- including replacing the 6TL batteries. Of course it wasn't the batteries .

I have two new Group 31 batteries in place and the 6TL batteries are sitting on a pallet. Is there a way to keep them fresh?

 

[Beerslayer]

The only way to keep them fresh is to connect them to a good quality float charger. I use the battery tender brand and for example still using a 7 year old battery in my motorcycle that only gets ridden occasionally.

 

[Heath_h49008]

Solargizer and charging

 

[Beerslayer]

Yeah. ^^ that's the other only way. Plus some more probably.

 

[mobileauto2000]

It is important to note. Just because a battery charger is only capable of putting out one or two amps it is not necessarily a float charger.

I have seen many, many repeat many battery destroyed by a 1 amp charger that was installed to save them while stored.

One instance was my father in law. He had a collection of late model Mustangs (44 at one time). He put a one amp battery charger on several of the cars as a maintainer and boiled out the battery's.

 

[timarr]

Use a tender and if u have them out of truck not set them on concrete floor it suck the life out of them.put a peice of wood under them .

 

[OLDCHEV4X4]

Use a tender and if u have them out of truck not set them on concrete floor it suck the life out of them.put a peice of wood under them .

Back in the old days when battery's had a wood case, this was true. Now days battery's have a plastic case and are fine to set on the concrete floor.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I take all the batteries out of my cars/trucks and tractors for the winter, and store them on the bench, in the garage. The garage stays around 40-45 deg. in the winter. I charge all the batteries to 100% capacity, when I take them out of the vehicles, when I initially put them on the bench. Then for the rest of the winter I keep them on trickel chargers, untill spring. I only have four trickel chargers, so they get swapped/switched to new batteries, every couple weeks or so. I've gotten alot of years out of batteries this way.

 

[steelypip]

They can sit disconnected for a week or two at a time, but they need to be charged to 2.3 volts/cell (14 V for a "12 V" battery) at regular intervals. The Battery Tender automates this process.

I have a 10 amp charger/float charger meant for boat batteries and a 3/4 amp Battery Tender. The little battery tender gets moved around between the small batteries around the place - it works great to keep things topped up, but it can take two days to get a big car battery up to floating voltage.

I've put an entire string of batteries in parallel on the 10 amp charger over the winter. It works fine as long as all of the batteries are fully charged before you hook them up in parallel and you don't let them go off charge long enough to get apart from each other.

With a big charger, I like to put it on a timer so that it spends most of the day turned off. Not only does it have a significant parasitic loss even when it's not charging the battery, it's actually better for the battery to hit it with a pulse charge rather than to gently float it all the time (stirs the electrolyte).

 

[emr]

batterystuff.com will answer all questions,