Thread: Revive a battery

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I guess I had heard of this, just never had done it.
The old battery in the Harley wouldn't take a charge so I put aspirin in it and it rejuvenated.
I guess one aspirin in each cell on a car battery so I did a half. Charge and discharged it a couple times and now it starts the bike and holds a charge.

I did some research on that a while back. I could not find any source that proved that aspirin did anything to help a battery. Rather, the best thing you can do is keep the electrolyte covering the plates but below the caps. Use only distilled water as the minerals in regular tap water could reduce the battery life. As electrolyte is sulfuric acid and water also it is difficult to see how it relates to aspirin.

All that said, hell, if it works it works.

Kitz

did you ever put an aspiran in a bottle of soda???coke?

Yes, so are you saying it mixed the electrolyte up? You could shake it also (being careful not to spill it on yourself or others) and not contaminate the electrolyte in the process.

Kitz

Asprin is an acid. "Acetylsalicylic acid"

Supposedly it removes the sulfate (or is it sulfide?) from the plates.
All I know is that it worked. I had made several unsuccessful attempts to charge the battery before the aspirin trick.
About 25 years ago I read an article in Easy Riders about reviving old batterys. It didn't involve aspirin. I can't remember everything they recommended but I had a bunch of old useless batterys and I dumped them all out into a bucket And flushed them with baking soda water and then clean water then put the acid back in and about 2/3s of them came back to life.

There used to be battery "rebuilders" around (there still may be). They typically had a rack that held the battery in an inverted position where they could spray water up into the case to flush the crud that accumulated at the bottom of the plates and caused the battery to short out. When the thing was flushed, they refilled with new acid and charged it....a large majority worked. Where I lived, they charged $10 and a trade in....(in 1976)...not bad if you were trying to get a car going on the cheap.

mike in tucson

There used to be a product on the market, something like XR-6 or similar name. I used it years ago, it was supposedly a battery rejuvinator. I used it in an old work car that I didn't have the money to put into a new battery, and I think I got something like another 6 months out of the old one. I don't remember the specifics, but I do know the battery was not holding a charge before the treatment and after I did it the thing would hold a charge.

I have also heard of the method you described, washing out the battery sediment and putting new acid in it. I think what happens sometimes is the plates touch and short out, and nothing can help those batteries.

Don

Lee Petty (King Richard's pappy) used to endorse a battery renew stuff that actually worked, for a summer or so. You aren't gonna get a new battery by dumping some wonderstuff in it, the lead has mostly gone out of the plates by the time they crud up, but like the man sez, 6 months more life is worth the few bucks it costs. Only trouble is, they can die for good without any warning.

Jeez yeah, I remember that stuff. White powder that came in a small box, printed up red, white, and blue with Lee Petty's picture on it. At least they said it was Petty, the print job was so bad you couldn't tell, it could have been anyone. I was working for an Allis Chalmers dealer at the time, the owner would buy anything, or gimmick, that he thought might save him a dime. Combines would sit so long between seasons that the batteries would go bad or weak. That was his magic solution. What a shiester, he would have made Barnum look like an amature! Funny thing, he went out of business a few year back....wonder why? Sniper

You can get some stuff here called recharge it. It's some liquid that you add to the cells. My old man put some into a battery that wouldn't hold a charge, and had sat discharged for two or three months. it came good, and he was stoked.