Servicing An Old Forklift Battery For Home Solar Power PT II

If you missed part I, please see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wVgUu7JXTQ
In this second part of servicing an old forklift battery for solar powered home use I separate the bad cells and attempt to remove the bad cells from the forklift battery.

I am off the grid out in the woods so all my tools are cordless and charged by solar power.

My cordless saw made easy work of cutting through the lead connecting bars between the battery cells.

I first isolated the two dead cells and attempted to slide them out of the battery case with a curved tip pry bar. I watched some videos about how to dismantle forklift batteries and this is what I learned.

You remove the filler cap and insert a tool under the lip of the battery. Then pull the cell right out of the case, straight upwards.

Another option I have seen is to use a special puller tool that fits snugly on the negative terminal of the battery and you pull the battery straight up out of the case by the negative terminal. Never pull the battery by the positive terminal. Only the negative.

Mine were too badly corroded into the case and would not budge.

So I decided to just isolate the two 12 volt battery banks and charge them up right on the back of the truck.

I found that I essentially have two decent 12 volt battery banks. After isolating them with the cordless saw, I got my DC generator filled up with gas and ready to go.

I have a DC generator which is simply a Harbor Freight gas engine which drives a car alternator. This is a 100 amp alternator so it is perfect to charge up forklift batteries.

You only want to put about 20% of the forklift batteries amp hour capacity into it during charging at any given time. So my 535 AH battery bank can handle about 100 amps of charge.

The DC generator alternator coils are energized by clamping the leads of some jumper cables onto the battery to be charged. The other ends of the cables go to the alternator to energize it.

The minute the cables are clamped onto the forklift battery you can hear the engine of the DC generator bog down some. This means it is putting a charge into the battery.

I ran it for about an hour or two on the first battery bank and then switched over to the second battery bank until the generator ran out of gas. This gives me about 5 hours of run time on a half gallon of gas.

I had the filler caps off the batteries while charging so I could watch the water and be sure that there was no boiling in the cells.

After charging I put the caps back on and let the battery banks rest for a while.

I am pleasantly surprised at the results of my tired old forklift battery so far.

I have hopes of putting the two 12 volt battery banks into service on my solar powered off grid homestead.

One forklift battery bank will be used as a second bank for my off grid tiny house on wheels. The second bank will power my solar powered mobile workshop on wheels.

The battery bank is still on the bed of my truck. Will I get it off? If so, how? Stay tuned.

Follow my daily progress on the path to self sufficiency on my off grid solar homestead.
https://www.youtube.com/user/techman2015/playlists?view=50&shelf_id=10&sort=dd

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