OK so here's the deal I have $1,500 worth of 6 volt golf cart batteries. I check the water monthly and rarely have to add anything when we are on the shore power. All of a sudden I notice they aren't aren't holding a charge, so I check the water... bone dry in all 6 batteries.



Now on to the meat of my post. I have been told there is a way to restore them. You basically flush them out, put cider vineger in them until it stops turning white (decalisify) then you replace the acid and distilled water and supposedly they are like new. I would have thought this a scam, but there are companies that will do it for you, unfortunately they charge more then I want to pay to have a battery refurbed. So anyone ever done this, heard of doing this?

why not try it yourself? im sure there are write ups on it all over the net- try it on one battery and see what the deal is.

Yea I am planning on it, although I've seen mixed guides, some replace the acid, some say use the old acid. I am assuming it would be easier just to replace the acid, doesn't seem like it would be hard to find, however I'm not sure how to figure out how much acid is needed for each cell.

it would seem odd that all 6 batteries failed though

Yea well i dont think they really failed, I think they ran out of water and that just isnt good for them.

all 6 ran out of water at the same time when rarely you have to add water?

Yea strange right, however I have a theory. You see I noticed that they weren't holding a charge constantly had 30 amps on them. My guess is only a couple of them went bad, but the charger recognizes voltage accross the whole bank, they are in series and parallel, but it recognizes all 6 batts as one BIG batt. So my guess is it couldn't maintain voltage accross the bank and continually charged them, at that rate it wouldn't take long to boil off the water in all them, like maybe a week if that. When I was using the bank as my only source of power i had to add water monthly, that is why i still check them monthly.

check the metals around the batteries, we had a boat that every metal in the bilge corroded really bad from battery acid cooking off - you may want to clean everything in that area.

Luckily mine is in a wood box and vented directly overboard, but yea I have seen that, battery's give off (i think) chlorine gas which is VERY corrosive.

you would have thought there was a fire in the bilge