Battery test at centre

Mar 05, 2007 4 Replies

Howdy all



I took my car into my local tyre battery place (not a high street one) this ones been around for donkeys years and has a good rep, actually went in for a a new set of front tyres. Told the fella about my battery woes and he got some strange looking testing tool out there was a guage in the middle and two arms with pointy bit at the end of them which touched negative and positive terminslas on the battery. Kinda imagine your face as the guage and your arms as the pointers and your standing like a muscle man :) I'm crap at giving a discription as your can see.



Anyways he undoes all of my cell covers and put this gizmo on and smoke\steam starts coming out of my cells he then said one of my cells is dead as the first cell was bubbling and then said I should change it asap as when one cells goes the others are not far behind, he didn't have the battery in stock but has it for coming in one wednesday which I said I'll be back in.



On his meter it 12v I think the needle shot to the right and he said its holding a full charge.



I was wondering if this is true as when one cell is "bubblin" the others are on their way out too ? what does this actually mean he also used the term cell 1 is cooked.



can I not just top it up with distilled water ? (forgot to ask)



Any information is very much apreciated


No. Bubbling, especially non-even bubbling is bad. Replace the battery.

Ok will do on wednesday he said he'd fit it free of charge as well.

Between now and then how safe am I using it ?

Out of curiosity how long will it last like this ?

Cheers

it is safe to use, it might last for hours or months, cold weather is usually the end of a weak battery.

Mrcheerful

Probably fine, if it dies it'll just stop working.

No way of knowing.

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