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Old 01-18-2010, 11:49 PM   #363 (permalink)
vpoppv
The $500 Electric Car
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Christ View Post
Afterthought -

Have you ever removed the electrolyte and actually rinsed out any of your batteries? Sometimes there's a lead "sludge" mixture that gets left in the battery... not sure how alum would react to that.
The first conversion I did I rinsed the daylights out of the battery before adding the alum. Since then, I have read that doing so reduces the performance of the battery. The theory is that the lead sulfate is what is needed for the alum to work properly; so the more "sludge" left, the better the alum battery will work. That's why with this one, I just did a quick rinse and removed as little of the sludge as I could.
As an update: I discharged it for a while with a bilge blower until it was at 8v or so. Then, I put it on the charger. It charged for under an hour. I allowed the charge to burn off or whatever it's called (surface charge??), and it is showing 12.36v. I'm anxious to see the reading after tomorrow's commute!!
Keep your fingers crossed!
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