Quote:
Originally Posted by ir0nma1den
Is there anything I should be doing to monitor the battery to make sure there isn't some fault in the electrical system?
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First thing I do is label the battery the day I get it with the warranty information because you'll forget all that. I write it on a piece of paper, often that's the back of a copy of the receipt, and then I fold it (to protect it) and tape it with clear packing tape onto the backside of the battery so that it's always there whenever the battery does fail.
Then you can coat the lead terminals and brass zinc-coated cable ends with dielectric goop, where it's often only the positive that gets those whitish greenish yellowish crusty deposits.
Also, I put a sheet of rubber from an old tire tube under the clamp to protect a tiny bit from vibration since the cells shaking loose their solids is what shorts out the plates as they fall to the bottom and fill up the space between the plates to the point that each plate shorted out lessens the open circuit voltage until finally the battery can suddenly die on you.
Every few months you pop off the cell covers to top off with H2O - if necessary - although if it takes a LOT of water, then you may need to charge it separately (but usually you don't need to put it on a charger).
If it sits for months, then you can trickle charge as needed.
Regarding the H2O... water is water... although city water is different from well water and every well has different chemical compositions too... but the question is whether or not those differences matter in terms of reality - realpolitik, so to speak. Sure they matter theoretically. But do they matter in real life use? I'm not convinced they do. Anyway, I used to use tap water for a long time but most people would scream bloody murder if they saw you use that. At the astute advice of a friend (who saw me use tap water), I recently started to collect rain water - which is essentially distilled water - and yes - I'm aware that if you live in a city - it may be even more acidic than rainwater normally is (rain is acidic from the carbon dioxide - not the sulfur dioxides which don't really exist anymore in any great measure). I use that rain distilled water for my clothes iron and car batteries (and for filling up the water in the summer windshield washer fluid with a dab of Dawn dish detergent). I'm not big on buying something that I don't see any real scientific information that matters if you bought it.