Marina scrap bin ..

[ParaHandy]

hmmm ... I needed a 12v battery to test the £50 B&Q generator I'd slung into the bottom of a locker 2 years ago (it laid under the dinghy which was a source of continuous friction wi hersel who claimed she got a wet bum every time she got in it so a new dinghy wus purchased and .. erm .. oops whit's this at the bottom of the locker?). So I "lifted" a scrapped lead acid 110AH battery from the marina dead battery dump and plugged it into Halford's cheapest charger and the generator.

The generator refused to start - fair enough, I suppose given where its been efter twa years. The spark plug got a seeing to but the chinese put it together on the p1ss; it was squint. Replaced it and it purred into life ... but clearly the mucky sine/square wave coming out of it wasn't doing the charger nor battery much good ... hmmm .. plugged the charger direct into the mains and 4 days later the battery's holding 12.7 volts.

jings .. some people are made of money .. there might be some bits of an ebesplutter doon there ...

[marisca]

I've travelled that same road with batteries. It might hold 12.7v but if you give it a decent sook with something like a wire coat hanger across the terminals (warning - it should get hot enough to glow bright red, so watch your fingers!) it might not be well enough to recover back to a decent voltage. The other way is to hang a bulb on it - something like a car headlamp yin - and see how long it lasts before going dim.

The last battery I threw away (read - recycled in a carbon-neutral tree hugging way) would hold the voltage as long as you didn't want to do anything like start the donk or keep the nav lights going all night.

[claymore]

Para
I still can't believe that you managed to get your car out of one...