one I hain't NAER heard of....

[islandmanagers]

Righto. I've got a few miles under me.  However, This is one that downright outright stumps me.  Buddy on a neighboring island has got two 150kW Kohler generators.  One's starter burnt up t'other day.  After a funny bit of chin scratching, we tested the battery.  It was not only DEAD, but it had REVERSED polarity!  At's right.  Positive was negative, and verse-vica.  Was (is) a standard lead-acid group 31.  How'dit happen??  Je ne comprepend-paz.  Shows a solid 12V, reversed polarity.  Load tester whacks it down to "poor", but far from "nada".

'Zis the battery equivalent of a mid-life crisis?  Next thing, is it gonna go out and start wearing clothing innappropriate to it's gender?  Buying red convertables?

--jcc

[nanotech]

Sorry, not much help to the discussion, but I just found your ending comment hilarious!!

Next thing, is it gonna go out and start wearing clothing innappropriate to it's gender?  Buying red convertables?

[islandmanagers]

my buddies response:  I think i have got it.!!

Picture if you will a solar panel, hooked to this battery.

Now picture a black hole in space, seething with negative. energy and

aint-no-matter.

So any more questions.

I didn't think so.

Thought you were going to stump me, hum.

If you hook it to a solar panel were welding hoods just in case its to

bright.

Rust never sleeps, hence accelerated aging.

[badmoonryzn]

Yikes, that is one I would like to see myself. There are several reasons this might happen, but they are only WAG (wild ass guesses) without the device to trouble shoot myself. What is coming out of the charging system for the starting battery? Does the genny have a separate 12-volt winding? Dyslexia? How is the diode pack? Did a space ship land close by? Is someone having fun at your friends expense? Had the battery been serviced lately? Was the battery charged on the other side of the equator and moved to your side? Oh well, I give up there are just too many variables. I hope you all figure it out, as I would really like to know what happened.

Best Luck,

Badmoonryzn

[thunderhead]

The chemistry of a lead-acid battery is, at the simplest level, two lead plates immersed in acid.  The plates get coated with different oxides created by the action of the electricity.

In theory, if you connected a battery (or diodes, or whatever) the wrong way around, then left it being reverse-charged for days (months) then it would end up working backwards.

It wouldn't do terribly well on things like internal resistance, which is what your load tester measures.

[lohearth]

  Maybe first sign of earths magnetic poll reversing? Could this cause fridge/freezer reversal? Think I'll move the washer and dryer farther apart.

[badmoonryzn]

As I said before: the lead acid battery, only a million year old technology. I believe the Egyptians or the Romans used these with two wires going to a short to burn off unwanted hair and skin eruptions. LOL More things the church held from us. Who started the dark ages? HE HE HE! Just think there were places to go 3000 years ago to get unwanted hair removed. Ah ha hya ha ha, LMAO This world first priority other than conquest: Vanity! Aah ha ha oh man, too much! OK, I'm better now. Sorry! We use to get these things and charge them in reverse to break off the oxide coating on the plates so we could use them again when they crapped out. This did not work on shorted plates, but worked just about as well as a new one. One had to exercise caution so the plates did not get hot and warp and we used a cleaning solution to rinse out the battery and added new acid. We then charged the battery at a slow rate the correct direction in order to keep the heat down below 100 degrees fahrenheit and quite often the battery performed like new. This was done on all types of batteries, but we were trying to bring back to life the forklift and deep cycle types, as these were the ones we wanted and did not have the bucks to buy new. My wife would have killed me if I spent money on anything I wanted. Oh well, she's gone now, bless her soul, may she burn in @## the @#^^&##@ B*%## opps, sorry God! Anyway J

Badmoon

[craig110]

Huh?

[Nothing40]

NiCd batteries can do that,if you discharge them too deply..I've had it happen to a couple NiCd packs..(oops!) cell reversal sucks.

Maybe it was connected backwards this whole time?

I dunno..I didn't know lead-acid batteries could do that.

[Flux]

I suspect that these batteries are being charged with a dynamo. It can be polarised either way. Normally you get sparks and smoke if you try to reverse polarity but if the batteries were dead flat then it could happen. With any other charging system you would have to reverse the battery leads.

I met this once with a dynamo charging system, It had happened long before I was involved for some other reason. The batteries were operating with reverse polarity and were starting the engine adequately. I left them in the belief that any attempt to change them back to original polarity would kill them.

I think they would have taken a long time to form backwards to the point where they could start that engine, but it was run by a bunch of "cowboys" and jump leads and many other issues were probably involved.

Flux

[thefinis]

Not sure why it happens but I have had it happen to a couple of my batteries over the years. It seems to happen when the alt or the starter short out and the battery is very low or dead. I am guessing that the short sends a backwards pulse to the battery that is stronger than the charge the battery has and causes the battery to reverse polarity. The fact that they don't blow up was what surprised me. I never could get my charger to reverse them as it just acted like i had it hooked up backwards and would short out.

Hey now no bad talk about cowboys. We are just in a little different mind set and figure that if it can't be fixed with baling wire and duct tape then it ain't worth fixin'

Finis

[stephent]

I could see Flux's posting about using a generator instead of an alternator charging system and having a flat battery--using jumper cables with a momentary reverse hookup "flashing" the generator to reverse polarity--then a proper hookup to start the power plant up doing just that very thing with a dead battery.

But that would have been the last time it started, before the starter went in the wrong direction with the new polarity of the battery.

Either that or a small lightening strike.

Or the alien theory...or new govt. laws stating equal opportunity for + and - polarity.

[boB]

This must be one of those rare "AC batteries" !

You could use one of those "DC transformers" too that I

hear mentioned sometimes.

Eternal energy.

boB

[veewee77]

Actually, if the starter were a series-wound motor, it would turn the same direction with either polarity aplied to it so it would not matter which way the polarity was applied to it, it would have still started the genset.

Doug