Reviving Dead Batteries With A Stick Welder

Can a dead, sulfated lead acid car battery be rejuvenated by repeatedly zapping it with a cheap Harbor Freight stick welder?
We experiment with the process and the results surprised us.
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[rockhoundingeasternwashing]

I've been using this process for many years. I live off grid. My solar power battery bank will get very weak after a few years use. I use much less amperage over many hours time to rejuvenate the cells. Yes, this process is for real and it does work very well. The real test is to use a battery testing hydrometer to check the specific gravity of the electrolyte in each cell. Check the SG before and after charging. That's the correct way to see how much it improved the battery performance. This process is not BS. It works very very well! Note: it's much safer and much easier on the battery if you use far less amperage and let it run for many hours. For a small car battery, 10 amps is enough. Depending on how bad the battery condition is, It may take 24 hours or more. Check the voltage as it's charging. It needs to be maintained at around 16.5 volts. Also check the electrolyte specific gravity of each cell from time to time. The process is complete when each cell has reached a specific gravity of 1.265. This is the proper way to do this. Using very high amperage for a short time is extremely hard on the lead plates. It will get far to hot.

[anonymity]

Tony's wife gave up a long time ago trying to keep him from getting killed. She decided to just film it so that the cops don't think she had anything to do with it.

[brianbrazil]

Works great!!! I used a 12v charger with 50amp jump setting and left it on for two days outside caps off and i revived a 15 yr old schwab battery that was sitting out side for 5 yrs dead. Runs my chevy 2500hd like a champ.

[disabledusnvet.]

Tony, just for the record, batteries can and do indeed blow up if aggressively overcharged with a welder(ac/dc or dc welder - electrode positive dc setting). Twice I had seen a battery "explode". Once next to me while a fellow crew member try to jump-start a dead battery with jumper cables on an aircraft tow tractor with another tow tractor on an aircraft carrier. He shorted the battery out and it exploded, I got a face full of acid, and the top of the battery was gone. The next time was a decade later while I was working(ironworker) on a jobsite and a coworker tried to use a gas-driven welder to "charge" a dead battery and he overcooked it on the highest dc setting(300 amps), it completely exploded, there was virtually nothing left except the very bottom part of the battery and tiny bit of the internal lead/antimony plates and the battery box was blown apart. Exploding batteries can and will cause severe harm with very serious injuries and even death from shrapnel from the exploding battery.

[BasedBidoof]

So I tried this and it worked! I was gonna use my dad's old 200amp jump start battery charger, went to use it and it was broken. Did some diag, found out it was the switch, and man they're proud of that switch, $45 for a stupid switch. I bought a 200amp stick welder for $70 on Amazon instead.
Tried it on my brother's old battery, which only had ~250cca in it, brought it around to ~500cca after only 3 cycles. I'm so happy, saved a bit of money, had some fun with family, and now I get to stick weld things. Always wanted to have a reason to get a stick welder.
THANKS UNCLE TONY 💜

[howardwilliams]

10:50 Tony says I'm going to bring this thing up to like a hundred. You can barely hear Kathy say NO. The look on Tony's face. LOL

[dyardsale]

Dude you're a genius! I have a 9-year-old farm battery (very large car battery) brand new never ever used. I bought it 9 years ago to power a winch that I never ended up using. It won't take a charge. I have a car charger/jump starter, a big one you plug into a wall outlet. I connected it to the battery on boost mode 40Amps and left it for 5 minutes. Now my battery is at 10V and holds voltage when I test it using the same battery tester that you have. I am going to do this several more times. I didn't want to throw out a brand new battery (will try to sell it and the winch), you rule!

[inoahmann]

I would strongly advise against using a welder for this. A CC CV power supply can accomplish the same goal in a much safer way. Set the current to 100ma and set the voltage to 40v. When it reaches the current limit and drops below 15v, change the current limit to 2.5a and the voltage limit to 14.4v. Let it charge until it is drawing under 100ma (this may take over 24hrs). Then set the voltage to 20v at 0.5a for an hour. After that, it's fully desulfated, and the battery has a much lower likelihood of exploding because of the lower temperature and current. I've had a lot of batteries short out using this method, but none have exploded.

[ottomechb]

My dad was doing this on our farm 30 years ago. He was always trying things. Don't know how he lived to 87 years. I have a 50 year old Associated Battery charger that on high charges at 18 volts. Works very good for this. I don't let anyone else use it, NOT because they will hurt the charger, BUT because like I did once, they will fry electronics. When I was 11 my dad had me driving the truck around the field at harvest. I couldn't see out so good so I sat on top of the extra battery. I knew not to sit on the top so i put it on its side. Later that day I asked why the back of my dads pants were getting large had red buns for a few days. Be careful with battery acid. Thanks Tony!

[machinist]

As a mechanic and a welder I can only think where this could go wrong in reality. That is where the broken plate would arc across it's gap and ignite the hydrogen gas internally like I have had happen to me. The plates stick together just enough to get things to start to charge, but when you hit the key and full amps are drawn from the cell the plate warps and separates causing an internal arc that ignites the gas quite explosively. This is much different than charging the battery and pulling the clip off creating an external spark. Both go boom but the external spark an we'll be avoided. Whenever messing with lead acid batteries a face shield should be your first line of defense.
If for any reason you feel uncomfortable doing this sort of work trade your old battery in on a new one.

[WL-mtmv]

I worked on a DC power plant that had over 600 large batteries and put out over 7, 000 amps. We always had eye wash kits and splash proof goggles on site for safety. Because the lead acid batteries were not exposed to the heat from under a hood or freezing winter temperature's some were rated for 60 years. When I retired some of the batteries were well over 25 years old and still going strong.

[karmicmessenger]

I've had a couple blow up in my face as well because in those moments of genius I turned on the charger before attaching the cables. The gas is hydrogen, btw, and it loves a spark. A professional desulfation is pretty much what you've done here, the only difference is the rate of pulsation of the current introduced into the battery.

[garyr]

You could let that battery sit overnight and retest it. If it passes a load test then it should be good. Most generally a overnight sitting will reveal if it's still good or not. A bad battery won't hold a charge very long at all.

[therealbenavis]

I run the battery room at my work, we mostly use AGM but the same process works with lead acid. If the battery is low clean it and top off(duh) hook to low amp charger. If it doesn't take. Run high amp for 15 minutes, then hook up to low amp. When you shock it back to life you're only charging the top of the battery and need low amp and time to bring to full health. Hope this helps someone.

[ujmrider]

This works very well. I did it last weekend on a battery from my Suburban. It failed to start and had to be jumped several times recently. The battery would not hold a charge anymore after being on a standard charger for several hours. Now it's just like new - full cranking power even after leaving headlights on for 5 minutes, or sitting overnight. Thanks Uncle Tony !

[jasonftp]

Great video, been doing this for years it does work. Not on every batt depends on the plates like you said. If the battery isn't shorted/cells aren't damage that process works 8 of 10 times. Great job man!!

[Z_]

Good idea. Never crossed my mind to use a welder. We always just used one of those heavy duty battery chargers. The ones with the 200amp boost. We would fill with water, plug in the 200 amp cables. Let it boil for 10-15 min. Then let it cool for an hour +. Then repeat. We usually did that 4 or 5 times for the great big ones. Usually only 2 or 3 that mes for the smaller car batteries. We kinda judge them by how fast they begin to violently boil. Brings them back from the dead. Good vid UT. *Edit. The charger must be the old school style analog. Not the electronically controlled ones, they will shut down before they do their job.

[oifovo]

You must use distilled water (then proceeds to flush all the dirt into the battery :D ) loved the video, learned something new today!

[Splashfun]

Interesting. This reminds me of something my grandfather told me many years ago, he was an engineeer for Union Pacific, he retired in the late 60's, early 70's so this was before rechargeable batteries. He said when their flashlights would get dim or die, they would take their flashlight batteries and connect them to the big batteries on the locomotives for a few seconds and it would revive their flashlight batteries.

[BG-ggpl]

Absolutely, learned this working on farmer electric fence batteries👍. I used old school shop battery chargers that had several options to help car crank.