landyacht318 wrote:
Letting Some of the plate tops get exposed was the only abuse these batteries suffered.
They've lived a pretty easy life as I never asked heavy loads from them and rarely cycled them, and few of their cycles were very deep. Perhaps this itself is damaging to a deep cycle battery.
I'm going to run them down a bunch tonight. Right now they are at 12.02 volts under a 5.7 amp loads and 23 amp hours from 'full'.
If I understand correctly, it is better for the batteries to be deeply discharged fewer times, as long as you regularly (monthly?) desulphate and equalize them. Shallow discharge will lead to less sulphation in the first place, but the electrolyte will still stratify. You need to equalize them (or desulphate which will do it too) to get some bubbles and equalize the density of the electrolyte throughout each cell.
Someone who knows better can correct me, but adding water to a cell that is a little low might hurt its performance short term since the top of the cell is in weak electrolyte, but it should only help it long term. If the batteries were working before you added water, their performance should not be harmed by adding the proper amount of water. Run them up and down, equalize or use the tester to get the electrolyte really evened out. Run a desulphation cycle.
Because they are not in an equal state, you might consider desulphating each individually, (or in pairs if 6v and your equipment can handle only 12 v) disconnected from the rest. Their differences battery to battery may be causing enough imbalance that to ones in the worse state are not really working hard enough to equalize or desulphate well.
Jim
