How to Restore a Car Battery Using a Stick Welder

hey everyone welcome back this is Bruce with DIY Homestead projects and in this video I'm going to use a stick welder to try to revive this sulfated car battery it's approaching three years old and it's been in my truck so I purchased it March of 2020 and right now it's November 22 and it's approaching three years old and it's been sulfated several times mainly because I don't use this vehicle very often and it just sits out there and starts to lose voltage and then eventually it sulfates I've seen a lot of videos of people doing this with their car batteries and they seem to be successful and I believe in the theory and I think it'll probably work so that's what I'm going to do in this video we're going to give it a shot and see what happens so let's have a look at the setup that I've got I'm using this Juba 200 amp dc stick welder and then of course there's my little Cheapo Walmart car battery that's sulfated I did top off the cells so that they're all at the proper level if you get too much electrolyte or distilled water in there when you're topping it off the thing will boil over so I've got it sitting on this plastic lid just in case it does boil over I don't think I've got it over filled but you never know and then the way I've got this stick welder set up is I've got the ground clamp in the negative lead and the rod holder in the positive and then I've got the ground clamp on the negative battery post and the rod holder onto the positive post now the reason I had to use a pair of vice grips is my clamp just doesn't open up wide enough to get around that battery post so I've just lightly clamped a set of vice grips on there so I clamp onto the thinner portion of that vice grip I should probably say at this point don't try this at home or if you decide to do it at your own risk just because you watched my video doing this doesn't mean it's safe or that I even recommend it I'm going to assume all the risks for myself and give it a shot and we'll see what happens now unfortunately I do not own a battery load tester so my only real way of determining whether or not this is going to work is I'm going to charge the battery fully after I get this completed put it in the truck connect it up to my solar battery trickle charger and if I can maintain that voltage over the course of several days it's winter time now and it's getting down to mid 20s at night and if I can check the voltage early in the morning before the sun comes up and hits that solar trickle charger to me I can determine that it's probably going to be a successful attempt and if this doesn't fix the battery or I might just do it anyway before my three years is up I got a three-year free replacement warranty through Walmart with this particular battery I'll just take it back and get a new one start all over again hopefully I can find the receipt I think it's in the glove box the battery is about 12 volts right now let's check that out just so we have a starting point since I don't have a load tester 12.04 is where the battery is sitting right now what you're going to do is you're going to overcharge the battery basically and it's going to boil or bubble which produces a hydrogen gas so that's very dangerous you don't want any Sparks happening around that but I'm going to open this garage door right here and that way I can get plenty of ventilation and another thing you don't want to be hovering over the top of this breathing in those fumes I'm going to stay back away from it other than holding the camera over the top so I can see if it's boiling what I've seen most people recommend is five minutes of bubbling and then let it set for 10 and do that process five times then you need to put your battery on a battery charger until it's fully charged and you should be good to go but I'm going to start at 10 amps and slowly increase the amperage of the welder until I start to see bubbling in these cells and then that's when I'm going to start my timer we'll let that run for five minutes and I'm not going to film the entire thing but we'll do the first cycle and then I'll do it four more times and we'll see where we're at okay here we are back let's go ahead and start this up got it connected the way I showed you I've got my welder on the lowest setting it's on 10 amps let's go ahead and we'll turn that on and I brought a flashlight out so I can see in these cells I'm bubbling already in all four or all six cells so I'm gonna start a timer and we'll go five minutes with this that's amazing that started bubbling a lot faster than I've seen on some of the other videos started bubbling almost as soon as I turned the welder on so my guess would be that maybe the sulfation isn't that bad on this battery and this is just on the lowest setting on the welder 10 amps they're all bubbling pretty ferociously so I'm just going to leave it on that lowest setting but you can see some pretty good bubbling going on it's creating that hydrogen gas the theory is is it's turning that sulfate back into a liquid form and it goes back into the electrolyte I don't know exactly how all that works but we'll see I've already started a timer we'll just run this for five minutes we'll shut it off let it set for 10 and then come back and do it four more times Just for kicks let's check the voltage while that's happening so just under 18 volts it's so that's definitely overcharging like your car alternator puts out about 14 and a half volts somewhere in that neighborhood just the lowest setting 10 amps so let me check my timer we'll let this set for 10 minutes after I complete this five minute session I'll bring it back when I get to that point okay it's been 10 minutes so the first cycle has been completed trying to desulfate or recondition this car battery using a DC stick welder the bubbling is completely stopped in each of the cells so let's check a couple things what I want to do is just check the voltage just for fun so let's see where we're at now 12.39 remember we started with it 12.04 I believe so I'm going to turn it back on and we'll start the second cycle I'm just keeping this down at the lowest setting 10 amps and as the charger comes on so does the bubbling or the boiling and the cells and the battery itself is still real cold to the touch it was like 24 degrees last night and it sat out in the truck all night long but again I have bubbling in all of the cells and we'll start the timer and go another five minutes another item worth mentioning I can't remember if I already told you or not but it is important that you hook everything up first before you turn the welder on so make sure you've got all your connections complete and then turn the welder on you don't want to like be hooking up a ground clamp or hooking up the vice grips or something with the power to the welder because you're going to get a spark on those terminals right next to where this thing's off gassing you don't want that you don't want to have an explosion and you definitely don't want to deform or weld your battery leads or melt them if you've got the type of battery lead that has the threaded in with the nut or a clamp style you definitely don't want to mess up those threads so I'm just about ready to start my fifth cycle but something that I've noticed and I don't know enough about this to understand why but as soon as I would start the welder and start that bubbling cycle I tested the battery voltage just right at the terminals there on the battery and I was noticing for the first three Cycles when I had the welder set at 10 amps the lowest setting started out almost 18 volts and then it was dropping down to 17 and a half or so and the third cycle it was just under 17 volts with the welder running and the battery cells bubbling so for the fourth cycle what I did was started the welder and started the bubbling process and I turned up the amperage on the welder until I saw right at about 18 volts on the volt meter testing the battery terminals and the only reason I'm picking 18 volts is because that's about what it was during the first cycle for the first through the third I used 10 amps on the welder and the fourth I got it clear up to about 80 amps before I was able to see 18 volts on the meter while it was running so for this Fifth and last cycle trying to desulfate this battery I'm gonna show you how I did that so let me go ahead and turn on my welder and we'll test the battery voltage as the cells start to Bubble see that's showing 16 volts so then what I did was I just turned up the welder and watched the voltage increase I see guys just increasing the amperage on the welder as they go from cycle to cycle just kind of randomly picking a a new setting this is a little more systematic and I don't know if it's a requirement or not and I honestly don't really know what's going on here maybe you know what's going on and you can share that with us in the comments my guess is as we desulfate the battery using the welder we are reducing the internal resistance of the battery and maybe that's why that voltage is dropping it's requiring more amperage from the welder in order to maintain the same voltage honestly I don't know but we'll let this one run I got to start my timer and uh we'll see you when we're done with this oh and just to show you because I know someone's going to ask this final stage it's almost 110 so maybe 100 amps on this welder connected to the battery in order to get that 18 volts out of it on the voltmeter actually that's a little more than let me back the welder down slightly here okay that's just under 18 volts and we're at about 95 or so on the amps on the welder and at that setting that's given us a pretty aggressive bubbling or boiling of the cells on this last round of desulfation I got that all cleaned up and the battery's been sitting after that final sequence of desulfation for about 15 or 20 minutes and it's right now it's sitting on 12.47 Volts so what I'm going to do is connect it to my car charger here this is a six or two amp depending on where you have it set I'm going to set it for a 12 volt 2 Amp let that set until the indicator tells me that it's fully charged two or three hours and then I'll put it back in the truck we'll let it sit overnight and I'll come back in the morning and give you guys a final follow-up as to how it did overnight it's supposed to get down about 22 24 degrees tonight and we'll see you then it'd only be a matter of couple seconds for you after sitting in the truck overnight I've just got my solar panel for the trickle charger unplugged got the outlet in the 12 volt socket there and then I'm going to try to hold this camera at the same time and show you guys what the battery level is on this reconditioned battery using a welder 12.3 after sitting overnight and it was about 22 to 24 degrees temperature Fahrenheit last night so I think we're in pretty good shape now I'm going to plug the solar panel back in and we'll go from there I think that in this particular case these sulfating or reconditioning a battery or a car battery with a welder seems to have worked if you're interested in this sort of thing or if you want to see the video where I reviewed or installed this renergie solar power trickle charger battery maintainer so that I can maintain this battery and keep it from getting down to the point where it will sulfate I'll link that video at the end of this one you can click on that link on the screen now and go check out that video and we'll see over there

Channel: DIY Homestead Projects

Views: 51,545

Keywords: DIY Homestead Projects, How to Restore a Car Battery Using a Stick Welder, use a stick welder to restore a car battery, how to desulfate a lead acid battery with a stick welder, using a stick welder to desulfate a car battery, how to restore a car battery with a welder, how to desulfate a lead acid battery with a welder, can a stick welder restore a car battery, restore a car battery using a stick welder, revive a car battery with a welder, stick welder to restore a battery

Id: JlSFD7fVA0w

Length: 12min 42sec (762 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 19 2022