Battery dead??!

[Andrea_374395685]

We have just been to our storage yard to check on the van today as we are off for a few days in half term. Hubby checks the battery only to find to his horror it is dead!
We connected the car up and gave it a good charge for about 20 mins and i will go and check on it Tuesday after work to see if its held its charge.
Is it time for a new battery or will this one last? Advice please!

Andrea

 

[xtrailman]

I would recommend that you remove the battery and put it on a charger suitable for the battery.
Rather than use the cars alternator to attemp to restore a dead battery, as this could not be healthy for the alternator.
It is probably dead, the battery that is, but its worth trying to retore it.
What you should be asking is why is the caravan battery flat?
Last time this happened to me the bottle box lamp had been left on, now i always turn the 12v isolator off!

 

[Damian]

If the battery was completely flat, 20 minutes on the output from the car will not charge it, or come anywhere near charging it
It needs a full charger charge, preferably on a multi stage charger, and for at LEAST 36 hours.

 

[JimD1]

Hi Andrea,
I agree that charging with a good multi-stage charger will definitely give you the best chance of recovering your battery. However, some of the more expensive chargers are controlled by microchip, & if they see that the battery level has fallen below a certain value, they will give up without trying - this happened to me. The LCD on the charger flashed up "Battery faiilure - please get it serviced or replaced". I got around this by using a very old 2amp charger which had belonged to my fater in law - don't ask me why I kept it - he's been dead over 10 years ..... After charging with this for 48 hours, the multi-stage charger worked fine & I've been using the battery all year without problems.

Good luck,
Jim

 

[SirRogerFFS]

Sadly it is a known fact that your alternator will not pick up a dead flat battery not like a dynamo used to all those years ago.
I am facing the same problem with a brand new battery but I know where my fault is ,so the answer is take it off the van take the batterry home and depending on the type of battery you have give a good old boost but make sure the plates inside battery are covered with distilled water.
Sir Roger

 

[Dustydog]

We have just been to our storage yard to check on the van today as we are off for a few days in half term. Hubby checks the battery only to find to his horror it is dead!
We connected the car up and gave it a good charge for about 20 mins and i will go and check on it Tuesday after work to see if its held its charge.
Is it time for a new battery or will this one last? Advice please!

Andrea

We once flattened our battery by leaving the fridge door ajar and not switched off. The internal light stayed on and that was that.
Apart from charging correctly as suggested try and find the reason why it went flat in the first place. Our present battery is 6 years old and still works well.