optima battery question

[ncracer1st]

Washing my race car and heard a hissing sound coming from my optima redtop battery, does anyone know why it was doing that?

[Dirt Knife]

Dry cell

Bad ground

or

emition of carbon dioxide or hydrogen gases?

[ncracer1st]

Is that bad, does it mean something is wrong with battery? I checked cables and they are good and tight.

[Dirt Knife]

Most

Most batteries emit those gasses dosnt mean its bad.

[merc123]

Straight from Optima regarding the hissing. Could be overcharging or incorrect battery charger. Optimas take a special battery charger (one that can do AGM).

I recommend this one, Schumacher XC75. It is under $50 and has multiple charge levels and can do standard, AGM (optima) and gel batteries so you'll never have to buy a different charger again. Plus it has "battery tender" mode so you can leave it on and it will decide when to trickle charge the battery.

It sounds like your charging system was responding to a deeply-discharged battery, so it might also be worthwhile to check the key-off load on your truck. If there is a significant parasitic draw present, it will continue to cause problems for your vehicle any time you let it sit for several days at a time. I don't know how much damage was done to your battery, but if you fully-charge it (12.6-12.8 volts) and disconnect it from any current draws, it should be able to hold close to that voltage for 12-24 hours afterwards. If it can hold a charge when disconnected from your vehicle, but loses voltage when connected, there is likely a parasitic draw that is discharging your battery. I should also mention that RedTops are not designed or warrantied for deep-cycle applications, including vehicles with winches, refrigerators or welders. If you have any other questions, I'll do my best to answer them.


Jim McIlvaine
eCare Manager, OPTIMA Batteries, Inc.
www.powerpacknation.com

[Matt49]

Some good information here. You can charge an AGM battery with a regular charger (kind of)...This explains it.

http://www.hotrod.com/techarticles/general/hrdp_1009_how_to_charge_a_agm_battery/viewall.html

[CharlieR]

There can be many reasons why the battery hiss, so what to do. First of all, you need to find out the reason for the incomprehensible sound and only then try to fix the problem properly.

[Leo58]

I had a problem with the battery, maybe the same. He was making some kind of interesting sound and I could not understand why this was happening. But one friend of mine advised me to replace the clams for better contact. I managed to solve the problem with Basic understanding of battery terminals with zemotor , having learned enough information, I replaced the terminals and thereby I hope to extend the battery to the robot.