Can you revive a dead car battery by inverting its polarity?
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- Опубликовано: 8 мар 2024
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Inverting a dead car battery's polarity - fairy tale or useful hack?
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If your having problems with battery thieves, that is the battery to leave for them to steal lol.
Yep, clean it up so it looks new and reverse charge it without labeling it as such...
@@volvo09yup, cant have any revised white polarity marks.... ;)
This is BS. Batteries shed lead, then the cells Short out
They will steal your old battery in hopes that you buy a new one.
Most battery thieves in my neck of the woods aren't planning on using or selling them.. they turn them in to whoever is paying the largest core refund..
Fully charge it in reverse polarity and leave it outside for the battery thieves. They’ll be “shocked” by what happens when they install it in their car. 😂
And thats how you get a battery thrown through your window at 3 am
If you can get it back out your car after everything melts.
Good for your cars computer 😂
especially if you place the battery on a land mine
I imagine they’ll just pawn it off like everything else. I don’t think thieves are stealing to fix their own vehicles most of the time.
That starter is impressive
Knowing the car it's Toyota - DENSO starter. They usually last the lifetime of a properly maintained car. That's 500.000 km for this engine, easily.
he tested it on a LADA though... not a toyota. @@Mprikiman
Not even a Toyota can easily
Handle 500k km in Siberia
Not Toyota, it's a Lada, basically a russian made Fiat 125@@Mprikiman
@@fastinradfordable True.
Someone give the guy that built that starter a raise!!!
No kidding! I kept wait for the smoke to break out.
I've dealt with a reconditioning shop. They would slowly discharge to zero, reverse charge and actually use a high voltage or amps to boil the acid. Then drain rinse and refill, then slow charge. Recheck and sell as cheap reconditioned. Most of the time many batteries go dead from sulfur buildup. Reversing the charge knocks off the sulfur. I used to have a reconditioning charger that did the same thing. Took about 2 days to complete. Worked very well, even on some AGM's
Super cool, I'm going to try this next time I have a junk battery
Smart chargers that rejuvenate batteries dont reverse the polarity. I have one, the worst battery it brought back to good had 0.3 volts and took 7 seperate chargings throughout 2 weeks and it load tests excellent and holds 12.8 volts without loss. Most batteries take 1 charge up to 14 hours to fix though.
@@rossbrumby1957mine actually reversed the polarity. I regret not keeping it, but it would discharge completely, reverse for about half a day, discharge and recharge correctly. I actually bought it many years ago from Sam's Club or Price Club back in the day. The reverse knocks the deposits off the plates. But you have to make sure it runs fully and not interrupted or it could damage the battery. I think that's why they discontinued them. Kinda dangerous
I have a battery that has drained to 6V and my charger does not want to charge it. i jumped another car battery in parallel on it for a few hours, it reads over 12V, I put it back on the charger, and the charger immediately starts flashing that there is something wrong with the battery and will not charge it. What do you suggest? Now the battery is back to 6V
@@makingcookingfixing the charger wont turn on the charging until it sees enough voltage. This is safety so the clips are not live until connected to a battery the correct way around. Thats why hooking to another battery made it start charging. The fact it went back to 6 volts tells me that battery is stuffed.
"Where's that smoke coming from?"
Starter: "Where TF you think?!?"
it actually came from the battery terminal
I myself is surprised the starter held up
Hi😊
I am suprised that starter didnt give up after this torture lol
I think starters are designed to run for a second. At 3 seconds I start to cringe.
Had a battery that was 11 years old and died. changed polarity back and forth twice, and it is stil working fine after 5 more years.
Keep that batter and see how many years you can get out of it. 16 years is pretty impressive.
Nice. I'll give it a try.
I did it exactly on my dead motorcycle battery, two years ago, and still starting and charging.
man as someone who gets -40 every winter thats fuckin crazy to me. You can spend $500 on a battery and it still wont start your shit in the cold after 5 years. I change my batteries every 2 years typically, but I also buy cheap refurbished batteries.
Die hard did this for me once
The most surprising thing is how the starter motor held up and how the flimsy stock cables didn't melt
It's only 150A.
There is a german saying:
"Everyone says it does not work but never tried it. Than there came one who did not know and just did it"
Can you post in native German please? I have a curiosity for it and translating backwards doesn't work well.
As my coworker likes to say, "It's never not worked before."
thats a quote by mark twain. "They did not know it was impossible, so they did it"
@@GraveUypo it is a saying since ever in germany. It is possible he got it from there.
The source from the saying is literarly what it says and has proofen multiple times in human history.
Some physicists for example back than thought thing A is not possible but never tried. They relied on theory, which was wrong. They got proofen wrong by someone who did not know it was not possible or, at least, did not want to believe so.
Happened countless times in human history. And because it is so relatable, it is a saying since a long time in germany, probably in other parfts of the world, too.
Because that actually happened and still happens regularly.
We use the saying when we do stuff and others think it will not work or we say it, to encourage others to do their stuff.
@@robertisaar "Alle sagten es geht nicht, dann kam einer der es nicht wusste und hat es einfach gemacht"
Now recharge to the correct polarity and retest.
Part 2? Drain it back down and see if the polarity can be reversed back to original polarity?
It can. it requires another 100% discharge.. But this does reduce its Amp hours significantly
@@wonderlandparty6054 Do you know if this reverse polarity deal will work on a battery that's been dead for a few years?
@UberLummox no it won't work, all the acid in your dead battery has cause sulfation on the lead plates. I was able to get a battery to work that was dried out by just adding new acid.
@SomeThingsElectric but to me it seems like the sulfate should be on 1 plate I don't know if it's positive or negative but reversing should change that so it seem like a best method for removing the sulfate
Switching it back would be ideal because positive and negative terminals are not the same size they are kinda close and you can probably make it work but they are different
I accidentally hooked up leads wrong on a completely dead battery years ago. It charged up completely but in reverse. I ran it down dead again & recharged it hooked leads correctly. It worked.
I'm not sure it even really makes any difference which way it's charged AS LONG AS- the battery is stone cold dead and therefore impossible to cause a short by connecting the charger backwards to a partially charged battery.
it works sometimes.
Lucky it wasnt half charged- youd have fried your charger like the time i lent my best old school arlec charger to a friend who decided to charge his battery while stoned. Burned out the transformer. Ive since bought a 9 stage smart charger which has polarity protection.
I wonder if this is how someone found out about this. One tired day they had a stone cold dead battery and accidentally hooked it up to charge on one of the old style chargers with no safety features and let it charge in reverse overnight. Then next day realized their mistake but got curious.
Wow. Lada starters are amazing!!
You know what is even more amazing? That Toyota at 9:00 minute mark has 299,999 km on it (which is nothing for a Toyota), but it would be cool to see that roll over to 300,000 km. That is the distance light travels in a second, well 299,792.458 km to be exact.
@@thatguyalex2835 9th gen Toyota Corolla all stop at 299,999 on the odometer.
@@thatguyalex2835cool
@thayguyalex2835
Unfortunately that simply isn't possible. The car in the video, along with many other Toyota products from the era, has an odometer that cannot exceed 299,999km/299,999mi. The actual mileage is likely quite a bit higher.
So that Toyota's kilometerage is 1 light/second @@thatguyalex2835
I'm impressed not about the battery but about the Starter motor. That starter motor must have heated up to over 200°. Before it quit working.
How do you know the temperature? 😅 Why not up to 150°?
Fascinating about the reversing battery polarity! But I find it more impressive that that starter motor didn't fail after all that!
Because the last cell which is tied to the cathode is typically the cell that's gone bad from corrosion, reversing the polarity and the pulsating D.C. from the alternator can break up the tendrils, and potentially relocate some of that debris into the other cells, so you lower the cathode cell's resistance enough to get it to hold some effective voltage.
Cleaning out the old cell with a potent acid and all the cells really, then flushing it, refilling it and lastly, using a pulsating D.C. charger can restore a dead battery completely. *When people hit them with a really hot D.C. such as a welder as some have mentioned, it can burn through some of the high resistance corrosion and get it functional again. With my background in engineering though, if you can't replace the cathode cell but you can effectively clean it out, this is the first and most crucial first step to restoring the battery and it being reliable.*
I've seen people use the welders and other high voltage sources of pulsating D.C. to get the battery back in good working order again, but even if it charges to capacitance I think it's highly likely that the corrosion debris is going to return to the cathode cell and before too long, it's going to fail again. A lot of businesses that rebuild batteries are simply replacing cells and, in many cases, the cathode cell will be the only one in dire enough shape to need extensive work whether it's a good cleaning or replacement.
I did a motorcycle battery last year and the cathode cell was abysmal, but the rest still in very good shape. The amount of gunk I stripped off and poured out after repeatedly treating it with acid was ridiculous, but afterward, the cell looked to be in very good shape again.
lead plates are very thin and plenty DC current will warp and destroy
exactly bro. Also this is not surprising
Interesting, thanks
What acid did you use?
What type of acid? Flushing with distilled water afterwards?
Didn't expect that to actually work.
Lead acid battery are pretty much the only type that have symmetrical positive and negative pole.
The only thing that make one pole positive and one negative is the actual charging. So in theory, there is really nothing that is possitive or negative in the chemestry apart from charging it
@@matsv201They are physically constructed differently tho. The positive plate is on a "grid" and was originally PbO2, and when the reversed battery is fully charged, this physically weaker PbO2 will be on the negative plate, which doesn't have the means to support it.
So it works, but nail a few potholes and speed bumps, its likely to fall apart on the inside with a quickness.
Now stationary batteries on the other hand.......
@@MadScientist267 Typically there would be a grid on both sides. That is not always the case, but its pretty common. The simple reason is that the grid also help remove the charge from the plate when in use.
I guess its possible that some batteries have only a frame to save on money. But it kind of make no sense. Then you need different machines to make positive and negative terminal
@@matsv201 They are made of different materials when the battery is assembled. Of course there is a different machine to make those plates.
They are different because there's no need for a grid on the negative normally, it is metallic lead that converts to sulfate during discharge. The PbO2 in the positive plate does the same, but returns to PbO2 upon charging.
The metallic lead (and the sulfate) are strong enough to support themselves, but the PbO2 is "softer" and does not hold its shape without mechanical support.
@@MadScientist267 if you would want to use this regardless. You probobly wanted to reverse it back anyway
This won't be the case for all failed batteries as they can fail in many different ways but hey it's worth a try, even if it only gets you to the next pay check it's worth trying. This channel never fails to answer questions I never asked (but maybe should have)
We did a similar test when I was in high-school we took 5 sulfated batteries drew them down similar to what you did and hooked a battery charger up backwards momentarily (the charger was one that you could adjust the amperage manually) then trickle charged them @2 amps, 4 out of the 5 performed as they were supposed to, with the correct polarity, it was explained that the reverse polarity removed the Sulphur from the plates
I have been sitting on 6 dead batteries that I have collected over the years... I even tried reconditioning them. This actually works?!?!?! This is an off grid game changer.
Same I have a few.... Might try it some day soon
Sometimes even just connecting your welder to the battery for a short time can fix them sufficiently to get your car to charge it up again, i always try it on old cars i buy that have been sitting for many years. I would say 50% success rate for cars that have been parked less than 10 years, and about 20% success rate for vehicles that have not moved for over 10 years
This can pretty much only be done with lead acid batteries. The reason is that the cells them self is symetrical and its actually chargin them that make them plus or minus. This will not work with pretty much any other battery. In a matter of fact, if you do that with a NiMh or a lithium cell they probobly will explode.
"if you do that with a NiMh or a lithium cell they probably will explode."
That's enough incentive for Garage54 to try it.
@@twentyrothmans7308 Well you are not wrong.
There is videos of people doing it with Lithium cells (NCA to be exact). but i have not seen it done with NiMh cells.
I mean, technically an exploding battery is more "alive" than a dead one, so it's still working, just not in a safe manner.
It wont explode right away.. It will start heating... And if it continued to allowed to heat THEN it CAN explode.. Most of the time it vents its pressure/contents and dies.
@@wonderlandparty6054 lets say there is a number of posibility and one of them is a very nasty explosion
9:05 ONE MORE KILOMETER!!
299999
Just _a few_ kilometers.
I think it might just be maxed out lol
It's already maxed out at 299,999... 9th generation Toyota Corolla odometers all stop at 299,999.
@@learjet1246What?!? Who decided that is the way is should be?
Welp, I got about 5 batts to try this on. And that Lada starter motor is a keeper.
Starter motor for the win 🎉
now that is actually the coolest battery hack I have ever come across on the internet. Once again, Garage 54 hits it out of the park ))
I love the channel and something about this video the translation feels much more fluid and smooth than what I have got used to. its great to see, and your projects are awsome.
8:19 lol the screw trick. A classic.
The speed of the engine turning over (on the reversed polarity battery) sped up because the oil finally made it to the engine internals.
A lead-acid battery doesn't mind bieng inverted usually, though the plates may be configured in a manner that means it probably wouldn't last long with the polarity swapped, especially if the plates have eroded through use and are ready to drop off...
Awesome! Also, this was news to me, wind chill doesn't affect to temperature applied to a car, if its -30c and windchild of say -45, the car only sees -30.
That why it's call Wind Chill Factor
Always learning something new on this show!
You can do this with just a couple sheets of lead in sulfuric acid. sodium sulfate. alum sulfate etc. reversing the polarity just changes which electrode the oxides form on. it is symmetrical.
but for modern mass produced lead acid batteries it can degrade the active material rapidly if you do it too much or at too high of currents.
We use to do that 40 + years ago. It will last about 4 to 6 months depending on the battery.
sup jimmie
Another awesome experiment. I honestly didn't think it would work as i figured a dead battery is a dead battery and would have to be rebuilt at least. I really thought it was going to be a joke like the perpetual motion video with the self running engine that breaks the laws of physics. Guess everyone can learn something new. Awesome video guys👍👍
You guys never disappoint. Fantastic as always. This is quite possibly the most interesting RUclips channel in existence.
i love the wrench test across terminals before the multimeter test lmfao
The plates are clearly made of Stalinium. That's how they survived. 🙂
The plates were obviously sulphated, And I bet the reverse polarity broke loose the sulphation . I remember a guy that accidentally recharged a battery and it held voltage .
i'v tried this already sometimes it works some time it dosen't.Still a great video.
Our family has a farm in Alberta, we have a battery that was charged backwards in 1999. Still to this day is the best battery on the property.
I think that was more of a test for the starter motor!
That's amazing, I would never have thought it possible. I'll have to try that with my ride-on mower battery, that's just about had it.
Now reverse the polarity back to normal.
not needed. It will be worse than before.
you need an old dc power supply to do this polarity reversal as modern electronic chargers wont accept the polarity change and stop charging, modern electronic chargers look for a voltage of 11.1 volts before they will charge the battery.
Wow almost perfect timing was just 4 minutes late today, normally RUclips notifications are later then this time, anyways great content love this channel🙌🏻😁
What I can't get over is how long you were able to continuously run the starter motor on that Lada without melting the windings....
Low compression helps, my old tractor only has 6:1 compression (well it did in 1949, might be less now) it does not mind being cranked for a long time, where my truck has 22:1 compression, gets hot very quickly
@Colt45hatchback Hard to guess where your tractors compression would be after all these years...on the one hand, carbon buildup on the piston and cylinder head will increase compression over time, but cylinder wall scoring will decrease it...based on your truck's compression ratio, I'm assuming it is a diesel?
@@cen7ury yeah its a non turbo diesel, a 1991 toyota hilux
@Colt45hatchback Oh, neat! I've never seen a hilux diesel, I don't think they made it to the US. I've got a couple diesel trucks myself; a 92 OBS F350 dually with the non turbo 7.3L IDI motor, and a 99 F350 4wd with the 7.3L Powerstroke. The 99 is a beast!
@@cen7ury nice, i am a fan of the 99's styling, we have some here but not many at all, maybe a few thousand total (australia) most of which are dual cab automatic petrol 4wd, i really wanted to get a single cab dually idi with a manual transmission, but the few that are here were either ex mining industry (rusty as hell from the nickel) or just abused and neglected by the tradesman (usually plumber) who owned them from new. There is however plenty of dent side f100 and 150's with either the australian 4.1ltr inline 6 like our falcons had at the time, or 302/351 v8's usually on straight lpg (propane)
The hilux is good, its 4wd and the little 2.8 diesel does more than its fair share of work without much trouble, i mostly use it for towing, not something its really made for, but it does pull 2840kg up a long steep hill on a really hot day no problems so long as you dont mind being in the slow lane (with that weight behind it you are flat out in 3rd gear doing 4000rpm (redline is 5200) at 85kmh. Its legally only allowed to tow 1800kg, but its no slower with an extra ton behind it 😅 and handles it well.
If you wanted to look up the engine to hear it, its called a 3L engine ( 3rd revision of the L engine) which is a 2.8 litre capacity
If you want to know what a strong starter motor is, I had to move my 1980's LeBaron Turbo Chrysler 2 blocks uphill to park it without starting the motor. It would crank over in gear and the starter motor was strong enough to move the car uphill while cranking it for like a minute at a time! I wonder if you can test that with a Lada... how far can you move a Lada in-gear with the motor off just using the starter motor?
I saw a Lada starter motor reversing up a steep hill in Kiev once.
What made things surreal was a Bentley driving past.
Lmfao YES we need a video
@@twentyrothmans7308lol hahaha
Let's.goo I hope they see this I. I bet a Lada starter could get into 2rd gear and 20mph lol for 5 mins before it blows up
That would be a hilarious video! What about multiple starters connected together, I wonder if that's possible...@@RustyShakleford1
We have seen this happen a couple of times, and it would be considered the more common of these rare situations.
For all intents and purposes, the battery will be ruined. You could technically charge it up, negatively, and continue to use it, but your plates are designed with the positive plates being lead dioxide, and the negative being composed of a sponge lead, which would now be reversed. Because the reversed battery is no longer formatted correctly, it will only work to a limited degree. The fact of the matter is, a lead acid battery cannot reverse its own polarity without an external stimulus. It is just not possible.
"Five days lay-tair..."
FUNNY!
Thank You! Awesome Work.
I wonder now about the chemistry of it. I never looked in to this before. Interesting.
If a battery has gone to dry in only one or two cells you can isolate these cells where the electrodes touch by using turpentine and motor oil two-thirds turpentine and one-third motor oil and then it is isolated and can hold power again but it only works in a static setup if you move it and shake the fluids around it will lose isolation. Another trick this filling up the cells with this instead of destilled water will prevent the short from being a problem it loses voltage though depending on how many cells you have to insulate the plates from.
Your trick works because of the way these oxides are moved over the plates with a good battery if the distilled water is not dryer up too much it will probably work for a while.
These kinds of tricks are for emergency circumstances only. I would not recommend going on with it for normal circumstances and replacing it normally but if you have to improvise this works very well.
Thank you for showing this...
can you do some tests on battery desulphators?
That starter is a beast fr... thats impressive as well. Good vid guys!
so if you fully decharge the old battery then charge it in the normal sort of way does in work
According to my rough sums the demostrated battery only delivered about 10 Ahrs. But then a car engine only needs a small fraction of one Amphour to start it.
One of the most clever and out of the box videos i have watched on youtube. Respect to russian brains, greetings from Greece.
Can you try dimpled piston (and higher compression or AF ratio), I'd love to see that comparison before after
I was expecting you to say just kidding at the end but it really worked.. I’ve got to try this myself.
These guys seem like a lot of fun. I really enjoy these videos =)
the 299999km on the dashboard 🔥
love the channel!
The fuel heater needs a battery in good shape, that's why batteries often gets changes for a new one sort of unnecessarily. In colder cimate (Sweden) we are nearly dependent on heaters to get going in the winter.
That's crazy! Hell of starter too!
I'm unsure if I'm more impressed by the battery revival or the sheer resilience of that poor starter. What a hero.
Guys, how about an episode on incrementally raising the Lada's compression ratio?
20:1
Very educational and entertaining videos. Big thumbs up.
Yes ive dropled them from 3' up fixing temporarily as well as drain, fkush, boil bake soda then add salt water turning into an alkaline battery then recharge and dead ones do come back excellent
If u keep lead acid battery trickle charge to 15.4v, it should last for 15 years. After 15 years recover battery with pulsation charger and continue using it. Technically pure flooded type lead acid never dies.
That's Very Impressive!!! Now I have to try that out now!
Try inverting the polarity another time to have original polarity then retest
I have seen someone reving these through electroicys kind of like when they use this to remove rust. You just use this process to remove the buildup on the tinplates to make them conductive again.
Not sure if the starter getting too hot was the limit of the battery tests or the batteries themselves.
Fantastic experience 👏
Definitely going to give this a try.
Im not sure you arent heat seizing the starter, not to mention as the windings heat up the resistance goes up thus drawing less current. You can a 170a current spike from the saved battery right as the starter siezes
Wow, thats suprising. Great work. 👍
I love you guys - you do all the experiments I think - so I don't have to!
Dang! I only wonder how long it lasts inverted. Neat work guys 👏
there's a big chance that battery was sulfated to begin preventing it to take proper charge. the remedy for this is normally several days of low current charge which it got but in reverse. I know this reversing trick works but in general you can just rejuvenate a battery by proper charging methods. But it was fun to see you try this battery hack
I would rather have a new reliable vehicle battery, plus they endure physical wear. But for deep cycle, solar, and UPS batteries, this is amazing! You can also use multiple batteries in parallel if you have the space to give new batteries more CCA, or a few old batteries the CCA of a new battery. It also makes jump starting someone else easier.
One of the failure modes of 12v batteries is one or more of the cells is out of sync with the others so its lower than the others. That screws up the cold cranking output of the battery because current has to flow through all cells. So discharging the battery until completely flat for two days will ensure they are all 0.0v. This is probably what restores the battery cranking current. I don't think it will help with sulphation though but boiling the acid can restore it apparently
I'll have to try that charging method... it's very intriguing!
Super! Thank you very much!
What a wonderful video! ❤
An old timer once told me this. I was skeptical. Never tried it myself. Never heard of anyone else trying it either. Good to know he was spot on.
I was wondering if you drained it down all the way, would it charge back to new condition, reversing it back to normal polarity.
Will this work on a battery that's been dead for a few years?
Almost seems too easy. Thanks for the video!
Old trick is to make a charging circuit from 120 VAC current limited by a rectifier and 60 watt 120 volt incandescent light bulb in series. The layer of insulation between the plates now has 165 volt DC pulses pushing little streams of current cleaning them off. If the battery starts conducting the light will glow before that you get intermittant flashes. Put the battery in a box outside covered as it might explode.
Great! I don't buy everything I see and hear either, but still keep an open mind. Thanks for taking up your time to do that for us: I have a few batteries like that this now - off to find a BIG bulb to drain them quicker and then have a go too. Great project on a wet day!
Run a couple or three headlight bulbs in series...
Can you now reverse the polarity again to restore the orinal configuration and retain the increased capacity?
no
Starter motors have no ventilation they're meant to run short bursts of time you're killing that poor starter that's one hell of a starter good video
This is a very amazing and unexpected result. Thank you for making this video!
I wonder if similar results could be achieved with a lead-acid battery.
Wonder if this total result has anything to sulfation? We have had batteries that were all but dead and won't take a charge, hooked them up to a desuflation system for a few days then they seem to take a full charge and work great. Perhaps reversing the polarity + charging them does the same thing. Would be interesting to see the reversed polarity battery, again completely discharged and then properly recharged back to normal polarity and load tested.
I'm trying this. Thanks
Leave it somewhere for the porch pirates to find and then watch the show
Adter all those test, did you tryed to revert the battery to the original polarity to see the performance? Thank you!
This is totally new to me. In the interest of science and my experiment-happy mind, I'm going to grab a battery core from my shop and try this.
Excellent work can't wait to try this.
Heck of an experiment!!
will the battry wirk again by inverting its polarity again and make it as original