Battery Bubbling While on Battery Tender Plus | GTAMotorcycle.com

Battery Bubbling While on Battery Tender Plus

unL33T

Well-known member
So my bike sat for almost a year. Battery was stone dead when I finally got it back. After a 1.5 hour ride down the 401 at almost 10k the whole way it held a charge at 8.5-9V (checked next day). Checked the electrolyte level and it was low in a few cells so I topped it all up with the deionized water they sell at Crappy Tire that says it's for batteries and cooling systems and put it on a Battery Tender Plus this morning. When I got home it's indicating that it's about 80% charged (green light blinking, red light still on solid). But it's bubbling quite a bit.

Google is giving me conflicting results about whether I should be worried about this or not.

Opinions? Is my house gonna burn down or blow up? I don't have a garage since I live in an apartment so this thing is indoors. I did put the battery in a small plastic bin just in case it starts to leak.

I already bought a replacement but thought I'd see if this thing is recoverable.
 
you may haver a dead cell, or two
charger will keep throwing current at it until it sees around 13.5 volts
a lead acid cell when charged is around 2.1 V
so times 6 it's charged at 12.6 V
it is possible to over charge a cell and get that higher, but it will boil over
charger doesn't know anything about the state of each cell
it just tries to get to 13.5...so the non-dead sells will overcharge
you can test this if you have a multimeter
 
It’s done. Send it to the battery graveyard.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
But is it gonna blow up and destroy my house? Otherwise I’m interested to see what happens if it sits on the charger for another day or so.
 
it will be giving off an explosive gas if it has dead cells
and the others are being overcharged
yes, it is a hazard to be indoors

dead cells rarely are saved by charging
 
Cool. Thanks. Guess I’ll pull it off the charger then.
 
Reasonable chance that is hydrogen gas.....hydrogen plus oxygen plus spark = bad news. Worse if confined.
 
It is hydrogen gas.
Charge your battery in a well ventilated area and you'll be fine. I charge batteries indoors all the time.
Charge the battery at no more than 10% of it's capacity. If you have a 200 Va battery use no more than a 20 amp charger.
A FULLY charged lead acid battery will put our 2.2 volts per cell, so a fully charged battery will put out 13.2 volts.
If your battery went dead you have lost capacity.The battery needs at least 12.7 volts at rest to be viable.
After you have charged the battery, put it in the bike and monitor the voltage as you start the bike. The voltage should stay above 10 volts for 10 seconds as the starter spins. (Does that make sense to you?)

The bubbling is normal.
 
I ended up putting it back on the tender outdoors just to see how it would go. So far it’s still bubbling but it says complete as of yesterday morning.

I feel I should also mention that even while bubbling away the battery doesn’t get hot. Maybe a bit warm but everything has been warm lately.
 

Back
Top Bottom