ElectroVLOG008: I was SURE the CAR BATTERY WAS DEAD!

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Naw, the lithium ion ones, with I assume supercaps inside, do work wonders. I connect mine with big aligator clips to the battery terminals.. Jumps my 1.8L car in -10 weather, no problem. 1 minute.

These do supply power to the battery but the cigar lighter plug in your car usually has a 10amp fuse so you can only supply 12v x 10a =120w with one of those. So it will take a long time to top of a standard starter battery that way. But a lot of cars are hybrids now and these devices can work great with those. If your 12v battery is completely dead plug in a cigar plug booster and your battery will be at 12v in 3 minutes. There is no real power available there yet but it is at 12v. The computer in the hybrid needs 12v to boot but only about 100watts which all comes from the tiny booster pack. Once the hybrid computer starts up the huge traction battery is now available to start the car. So 3 min. Probably was a hybrid. Non hybrids will need 30-90 min with one of those and will only work if the starter battery can still take a charge.

Alex Taylor

Also, I watched a guy at Advance Auto bring out what looked like a cell phone power bank that was fited with a cigar lighter plug on it. He plugged it into the lighter plug and gave it about 3 min and then cranked the car right up. Do these things really work that well?? Thought they were gimmicky.

LloydGreat video. never thought out pulling the 12v out of my UPS or the battery for my drill. Both would give a dead battery a good assist. On thing to do when you need to jump a battery with jumper cables and the battery is dead or shorted. Hook the positive jumper cable to the positive battery terminal and the negative directly to a source of ground on the car. It can be an engine part that is bare metal or a bolt holding the macpherson strut to the car. This takes the bad battery out of the equation and you are not trying to feed current through the damaged or dead battery. Love doing this when the young mechanic guys try to show off to the ladies they will get their car jumped and the dead battery just won[t let the current needed flow. I walk up and say hey let me try this, something I learned when I was younger, (now almost 69) . Hook it up bypassing the installed battery and 9 times out to ten ( if there is not an ignition or fuel issue) it will crank up first time. Love the looks on the faces of the young guys trying to look cool for the ladies. Try it the next time the regular hook up stil will not kick over the engine.

oh man, every time I saw the smoke coming up, i was like "this time the battery is going to catch fire and all the car with it" My second though was "15min of car running in underground parking? sure that must be go"od

lesto

It's surprising how some lead acid batteries manage to survive being drained all the way to near 0V. My Dad's camper had an incorrectly wired radio when he bought it used. The radio did not switch off with the ignition, so often ended up with a totally drained battery when he came back to it a week or two later. To recharge it, he had to use a "dumb" charger to get the voltage up to around 10V before the smart charger would recharge it. Despite running down the battery multiple times due to that radio (which he got fixed later), the camper is still on the original battery and starts up every time fine even when left for a few months between use. I've no doubt the life expectancy of the battery has reduced, but am surprised that battery hasn't failed by now, unlike its secondary deep cycle leisure battery which has since been replaced.

Seán Byrne

Seriously, change the battery! That kind of discharge does permanent damage unless it's a marine battery!

Dustin

Those puny little alligator clip leads sure do make spectacular fuses eh Mehdi... ;) Thanks for another entertaining video mate! 0.77V... yup, that battery is thoroughly ruined. Any attempts to fully charge it at this point would basically be like trying to reanimate a corpse, "Weekend At Bernies" style... you might get some appearance of life out of it, but it's not going to last very long. I doubt it would hold charge for longer than a day or two at this point. Anywhere below about 6 volts you'll have one or more cells reverse-charging and sulfating the hell out of themselves. That said, I have managed to partially rejuvenate a maintenance-free lead acid battery that had fallen to about 4.5 volts by using the Refresh mode on my switchmode "smart charger" (which pumps high-frequency AC through the cells at low current to break down the sulfates). The charger wouldn't even recognise that there was a battery connected, but I bootstrapped it with a wall-wart style SLA trickle charger that I had lying around, to "jump start" the Refresh process. I think I ended getting another ~6 months of life out of the battery before it would no longer accept a charge.

Chris Talbot

To me, ... the question IS, is there any permanent damage? ..... is this the first time that particular battery has gone flat like that? ..... if so, you may get away with it. ..... The discharge could be warped plates in the battery itself. ..... Check the battery fluid levels, trickle charge the battery at around 5amp for 24 hours, ... let it stand for 24 hrs &amp; test it again, if it is over 12 volts, you are good to go. ..... But i'm guessing you don't need any of the advise given by machenics like myself,(yes I deliberately misspelt it, ha ha ha) or any of the silly ideas given by some in this comments section, ha ha ha "epson salts", ... what a plonker.....

Mehdi, you can bring your car battery home, discharge with 1-2 amps, and charge it with your lab supply, with 0.6 amp or so. This will bring back some of its capacity, if one of battery cells is not shorted internally, of course. Also, in extreme situations you can completely disconnect your battery and start from supercaps only, And then connect battery back. But this method may kill the computer.

Mehdi has some sexy female fans on YouTube ;) One of them specially got “turned on” by his singing voice 😂

Slightly?! 😂

You could also have an intermittently dead cell that would act as a resistor and kill the battery. Especially if you've run it dead before leading to sulfation of the plates. Might not be a bad idea to replace it at this point. Especially if it's still under warranty. Those alligator clips are going to start adding up. ;)

👆🏼 What he said... 😈

How about using a boost converter to charge the capacitors to 14v -ish even from a flat battery. Then dump it all in one smokey moment of starting fury. Should let you start a car with a relatively flat battery and only the capacitors.

You terrify me.

Kenneth Carlile

You won't know if the battery is toast until it sits for a few hours. The vehicle should draw no more than 50 mA with everything off.

Take that battery and check the fluid in it. Make sure the plates are covered. if exposed, fill just to the top of the plates with distilled or DI water. Take the battery up you your little electrical sin shack and charge it with your bench supply at 16.2V current limited at 1.5A. This should slough off a good deal of lead sulfate that could be insulating the surface of the plates from the electrolyte. during this process, you should see the current go up as sulfate falls off, and then come back down as the the specific gravity of the electrolyte increases with added charge. If the current keeps climbing or the voltage starts dropping with an associated increase in temperature, you have an internal short and need to replace the battery.

Adam Nash

Btw you do need a new battery. I will bet you $100 will get stuck somewhere within a week. You better check your fuses too. Even an overnight charge an epsom salts cant fix that battery. If you dont know just ask me how.

Johnny Legbone

Woman. Dont worry there is no woman here, or is there. I will be surprised bc men and woman are different and this is nit a typical woman chanel. So is there a woman here?

Johnny Legbone

The battery capacity will be reduced by discharging it so low, the real test will be when it sits overnight in (close to) freezing temperatures

R.M.E. Boots

JETTO SETUP!

It summer now. Let's see how it fares when it's -40 out this winter in Canuckistan

Felix

Should get a new battery every 5 years anyway. So you wont be stuck somewhere

Is it just me or is the thought of Mehdi behind the wheel slightly scary?

I had a battery drop down that low after a light was left on. Battery charger wouldn't even detect that something was there, bumped it with another battery I had around then let the charger take over after that. Lasted another 2 years after that.

The smoke isn't a bad sign. The contrary - it means that everything is working correctly.

Apuis Retsam

I hate those ugly alligator clips, they can’t handle more than 1A!!