Why would a battery do this?

[dnix71]

We bought a Crown 24v pallet jack from a sister company a little over 2 months ago. It arrived stone cold dead in the crate. The senders insist it was in good working order when they shipped it. At the next scheduled preventative maintenance, the Crown service tech looked at it and said yeah, the battery is dead and so is the charger and controls.  A Deka battery tech looked at it too and said the battery was toast. Since this was an major asset and we bought in internally it took awhile to decide that scrapping it was the least worse way out.

Deka offered $60 for the battery. Crown didn't want a 410 lb. dead flooded lead acid battery (Exide 24v 200AH @ C/6 in a steel shell). The boss refused the offer because it was worth more for scrap than that. They dragged the lift out of the warehouse and set it in front of where we clock in and out. For the last week I've been thinking maybe I could salvage something from this, like the battery. It would be a little hard to carry home but would nearly double my storage if I could just get it to work.

When the lift was in the warehouse I checked the voltage and got 0, zip, nada, zilch. But after they dragged the lift out I checked again and found it was 8.4. While I was holding the probes wondering how a lead battery could be 8.4v the voltage slowly began to rise until it went past 9.5. I got a common car battery charger, popped the lid and boosted half at 30 amps until it was 14.4 then flipped the charger over and boosted the other half to 14.4. All this took less than 1/2 hour.

When I plugged the Anderson connector back in and turned the key the gauge went 10 bars green and the lift ran like nothing had ever been wrong. The built-in 120vac charger worked again, too. It stayed on a charge all day and was well over 26.3v resting. We're going to keep the lift now. The laminating department needs one.

The boss was so happy he gave me a Publix gift card.

[97fishmt]

Hi,
I bought a 36 volt golf kart a few years ago
for $250.  The owner put new trojan t-105's
in it and it never worked. The charger worked
and the batteries were up to full charge but it
would not go.

I paid him the money and went to get my trailer.
I got the trailer ready to load and fiddled with a diode
on one of the solenoids and drove it onto the trailer.

It was the old mechanical control stuff but for 6 new
batteries and maybe an upgrade for the electronics I
thought it was worth it. ( The guy was almost crying
when I pulled away.)

Anyhow maybe a bad connection somewhere?

[mab]

The only thing I can suggest is that something was left on whilst it was in the crate; Eventually it drained the battery down to zero. As Long as the drain was on the battery it would read zero.

when you tested it outside maybe you or someone else knocked a switch or something which removed the drain - the battery voltage would have started to rise at that point.

As for it not charging before - some 'smart' chargers wont charge a battery if it's at zero volts - they 'think' there's no battery connected - hence in only worked once the battery volts had come up.