How To Fix An Overcharged Battery

Last Updated August 31, 2021

One of the to the lowest degree commonly known vehicle-related problems is overcharging a car battery. Despite this, overcharging a machine bombardment is a fairly common mistake.

This can easily exist washed by a practice-it-yourself mechanic since battery changes and recharging are not usually very hard tasks; however, mechanics tin can make this type of mistake too.

There are several ways a bombardment can be overcharged, and several minor to very dangerous consequences can consequence. Fixing a battery overcharging outcome often means switching the unabridged battery for a new one since this issue has a loftier potential to ruin a battery birthday.

How Does a Auto Battery Piece of work?

Without going into too much detail, a motorcar battery works when the compounds inside the bombardment react with each other to create energy. Most normal batteries incorporate lead and lead dioxide plates with each batter cell that trigger a reaction when they interact with sulfuric acid.

This reaction ultimately produces electrons that produce electricity that power the devices in your car and provide the power needed to first. Understanding these reactions and the chemicals that make them piece of work is important when discussing the consequences of overcharging.

How Can a Car Battery Be Overcharged?

There are several unlike ways in which a car battery can exist overcharged. Near are adequately obvious and can sometimes be defenseless in time to avoid total battery replacement, simply others are non as like shooting fish in a barrel to diagnose.

Leaving information technology on a Battery Charger for Too Long

Many different automotive retail locations sell bombardment chargers. These can exist helpful when your vehicle has been sitting for an extended time without beingness driven. Of course, it can also be helpful to accept just in instance any other state of affairs comes upward.

When it is time to utilize the charger, it is important to use it for the corporeality of time noted on the instructions. Leaving the battery charging for too long is a surefire way to overcharge information technology.

Improper Battery Charger Usage

Using merely about annihilation improperly will ever accept the potential for at least something undesirable to happen. For a vehicle battery, hooking information technology upwards incorrectly, not reading the instructions on how to use information technology, or any other improper usage could result in overcharging, particularly if information technology is your first time using i.

Faulty Battery Charger

If yous have a bombardment charger that you have used for years, the best matter to practice is to keep it in working order then that you can avoid a faulty charger.

If you find that you have bought a charger, and information technology is acting strange or not working correctly, you should exist able to find out whether it is covered past a warranty and rectify the problem with the manufacturer.

A manufacturing flaw is much less common than a tool that wears out and breaks, but both happen.

Alternator Problems

A vehicle'due south alternator recharges the bombardment as the vehicle moves then that it does not go expressionless from using the radio, air conditioner, and other controls. When the alternator wears out, breaks, or fails altogether, it could cause bombardment overcharging. Generally, a failed alternator will ultimately not allow the battery to recharge and volition eventually lead to the vehicle losing ability altogether.

Despite this, a failed alternator can take the opposite upshot. Modern vehicles utilize many different sensors for just near annihilation, including a sensor on the alternator that prevents the bombardment from beingness overcharged. If this sensor fails, the alternator will not be able to shut off providing a charge.

Voltage Regulator Issues

A vehicle's voltage regulator evens out the corporeality of charge being sent to the power supply. This means that when there is a spike in electricity, the voltage regulator helps prohibit too much voltage from reaching necessary components.

Like to the alternator problems discussed above, a faulty voltage regulator can ship too much charge to the battery.

What Happens if You Overcharge a Automobile Bombardment?

Overcharging a car battery rarely has severe safety consequences for you, but that chance is not nada. Additionally, when dealing with a component that creates energy and has an electrical current, information technology is ever best to exist cautious when doing annihilation with a car battery.

Bombardment Lifespan Subtract

The most obvious result that will come up from overcharging a bombardment is the decrease in its lifespan. This tin can be seen in smaller electronic devices besides, such as phones and flashlights.

Consistently leaving a phone or flashlight plugged in and charging volition decrease its ability to hold a accuse. The aforementioned is true of a car bombardment.

Read More: When Should You Supervene upon a Auto Bombardment? Lifespan Explained

Dead Bombardment

Most things are manufactured to be equally safe as possible, and car batteries are the same. Most batteries are designed to simply stop functioning when overcharging is detected.

This prevents annihilation dangerous from occurring since a battery contains corrosive chemicals and can produce power.

Read More: How Long Does it Accept to Re-Charge a Dead Car Battery?

Battery Swelling and Melting

Battery swelling and melting are much more common in older style batteries. Modern batteries are usually much safer, but this is not impossible with them either.

Bombardment swelling tin can occur as overcharging causes the chemical reactions within the battery to occur at a college charge per unit or a more numerous charge per unit than the battery is designed to handle.

Melting occurs because these reactions and electricity passing through the battery also create estrus. When too much energy passes through the battery, both could occur.

Battery Leaking

Bombardment leaking is one of the direct results of both swelling and melting. This is problematic since the chemical compounds that make upwards the battery are corrosive. Sulfuric acrid is both toxic and harmful to the skin and the environment which is too why batteries should be recycled appropriately rather than being thrown away at the end of their life.

Bombardment Exploding

In rare situations, a bombardment could explode. Once again, this is more than mutual with older battery types, but it is possible in any bombardment when overcharging occurs. This is specially true when bulging occurs since the contents become pressurized equally backlog free energy is passed through the cells.

How Practise Y'all Check For and Prepare an Overcharged Bombardment?

At that place are only two fixes for overcharging batteries. The first is not as much of a ready as it is a precaution: practise not overcharge the battery.

Always read the instructions on any battery charger if that is what you are using that could cause overcharging. If a battery has been overcharged, at that place is still the take chances that you can use it if information technology has not died. Doing this consistently will decrease its lifespan or crusade other issues, but just considering information technology has happened once does not e'er hateful the battery is ruined.

The second fix for an overcharged battery is to supervene upon it. If the bombardment melts, swells, or explodes, information technology is obvious that a replacement is necessary. If your vehicle'south alternator or voltage regulator is to arraign for an overcharged bombardment, a fix for those components may accompany a battery replacement if the impairment is also extensive for the bombardment.

To check for an appropriate bombardment charge, you can buy a multimeter to read the voltage through the battery. When your vehicle is on, yous tin employ the multimeter on the battery terminals to run across the amount of voltage traveling through the battery. Normal voltage is usually between 12.eight and 14.7 volts.

Final Thoughts

Information technology is possible to overcharge your automobile battery. Overcharging from using a battery charger is easy to exercise if you are not conscientious to read the instructions.

This is easily fixable if yous know what is happening by charging the battery for the appropriate fourth dimension. Overcharging from other sources like a faulty alternator or voltage regulator are non always as piece of cake to diagnose.

Overcharged batteries usually suffer from decreased lifespan or just die after too much charge is received. In extreme cases, overcharging can cause bombardment melting, swelling, and exploding. You can check your battery voltage by using a multimeter, or if y'all are uncomfortable doing then, you tin have a mechanic do it for you lot.