If your having problems with battery thieves, that is the battery to leave for them to steal lol.

I've dealt with a reconditioning shop. They would slowly discharge to zero, reverse charge and actually use a high voltage or amps to boil the acid. Then drain rinse and refill, then slow charge. Recheck and sell as cheap reconditioned. Most of the time many batteries go dead from sulfur buildup. Reversing the charge knocks off the sulfur. I used to have a reconditioning charger that did the same thing. Took about 2 days to complete. Worked very well, even on some AGM's

Fully charge it in reverse polarity and leave it outside for the battery thieves. They’ll be “shocked” by what happens when they install it in their car. 😂

"Where's that smoke coming from?" Starter: "Where TF you think?!?"

That starter is impressive

Had a battery that was 11 years old and died. changed polarity back and forth twice, and it is stil working fine after 5 more years.

Someone give the guy that built that starter a raise!!!

There is a german saying: "Everyone says it does not work but never tried it. Than there came one who did not know and just did it"

The most surprising thing is how the starter motor held up and how the flimsy stock cables didn't melt

I accidentally hooked up leads wrong on a completely dead battery years ago. It charged up completely but in reverse. I ran it down dead again & recharged it hooked leads correctly. It worked.

Now recharge to the correct polarity and retest.

Because the last cell which is tied to the cathode is typically the cell that's gone bad from corrosion, reversing the polarity and the pulsating D.C. from the alternator can break up the tendrils, and potentially relocate some of that debris into the other cells, so you lower the cathode cell's resistance enough to get it to hold some effective voltage. Cleaning out the old cell with a potent acid and all the cells really, then flushing it, refilling it and lastly, using a pulsating D.C. charger can restore a dead battery completely. *When people hit them with a really hot D.C. such as a welder as some have mentioned, it can burn through some of the high resistance corrosion and get it functional again. With my background in engineering though, if you can't replace the cathode cell but you can effectively clean it out, this is the first and most crucial first step to restoring the battery and it being reliable.* I've seen people use the welders and other high voltage sources of pulsating D.C. to get the battery back in good working order again, but even if it charges to capacitance I think it's highly likely that the corrosion debris is going to return to the cathode cell and before too long, it's going to fail again. A lot of businesses that rebuild batteries are simply replacing cells and, in many cases, the cathode cell will be the only one in dire enough shape to need extensive work whether it's a good cleaning or replacement. I did a motorcycle battery last year and the cathode cell was abysmal, but the rest still in very good shape. The amount of gunk I stripped off and poured out after repeatedly treating it with acid was ridiculous, but afterward, the cell looked to be in very good shape again.

Wow. Lada starters are amazing!!

Part 2? Drain it back down and see if the polarity can be reversed back to original polarity?

I'm impressed not about the battery but about the Starter motor. That starter motor must have heated up to over 200°. Before it quit working.

This won't be the case for all failed batteries as they can fail in many different ways but hey it's worth a try, even if it only gets you to the next pay check it's worth trying. This channel never fails to answer questions I never asked (but maybe should have)

We did a similar test when I was in high-school we took 5 sulfated batteries drew them down similar to what you did and hooked a battery charger up backwards momentarily (the charger was one that you could adjust the amperage manually) then trickle charged them @2 amps, 4 out of the 5 performed as they were supposed to, with the correct polarity, it was explained that the reverse polarity removed the Sulphur from the plates

Didn't expect that to actually work.

I have been sitting on 6 dead batteries that I have collected over the years... I even tried reconditioning them. This actually works?!?!?! This is an off grid game changer.

Fascinating about the reversing battery polarity! But I find it more impressive that that starter motor didn't fail after all that!

9:05 ONE MORE KILOMETER!!

now that is actually the coolest battery hack I have ever come across on the internet. Once again, Garage 54 hits it out of the park ))

I love the channel and something about this video the translation feels much more fluid and smooth than what I have got used to. its great to see, and your projects are awsome.

This can pretty much only be done with lead acid batteries. The reason is that the cells them self is symetrical and its actually chargin them that make them plus or minus. This will not work with pretty much any other battery. In a matter of fact, if you do that with a NiMh or a lithium cell they probobly will explode.

Welp, I got about 5 batts to try this on. And that Lada starter motor is a keeper.

You guys never disappoint. Fantastic as always. This is quite possibly the most interesting KZfaq channel in existence.

Awesome! Also, this was news to me, wind chill doesn't affect to temperature applied to a car, if its -30c and windchild of say -45, the car only sees -30.

If a battery has gone to dry in only one or two cells you can isolate these cells where the electrodes touch by using turpentine and motor oil two-thirds turpentine and one-third motor oil and then it is isolated and can hold power again but it only works in a static setup if you move it and shake the fluids around it will lose isolation. Another trick this filling up the cells with this instead of destilled water will prevent the short from being a problem it loses voltage though depending on how many cells you have to insulate the plates from. Your trick works because of the way these oxides are moved over the plates with a good battery if the distilled water is not dryer up too much it will probably work for a while. These kinds of tricks are for emergency circumstances only. I would not recommend going on with it for normal circumstances and replacing it normally but if you have to improvise this works very well. Thank you for showing this...

8:19 lol the screw trick. A classic.

Another awesome experiment. I honestly didn't think it would work as i figured a dead battery is a dead battery and would have to be rebuilt at least. I really thought it was going to be a joke like the perpetual motion video with the self running engine that breaks the laws of physics. Guess everyone can learn something new. Awesome video guys👍👍

You can do this with just a couple sheets of lead in sulfuric acid. sodium sulfate. alum sulfate etc. reversing the polarity just changes which electrode the oxides form on. it is symmetrical. but for modern mass produced lead acid batteries it can degrade the active material rapidly if you do it too much or at too high of currents.

Always learning something new on this show!

A lead-acid battery doesn't mind bieng inverted usually, though the plates may be configured in a manner that means it probably wouldn't last long with the polarity swapped, especially if the plates have eroded through use and are ready to drop off...

Starter motor for the win 🎉

If you want to know what a strong starter motor is, I had to move my 1980's LeBaron Turbo Chrysler 2 blocks uphill to park it without starting the motor. It would crank over in gear and the starter motor was strong enough to move the car uphill while cranking it for like a minute at a time! I wonder if you can test that with a Lada... how far can you move a Lada in-gear with the motor off just using the starter motor?

The speed of the engine turning over (on the reversed polarity battery) sped up because the oil finally made it to the engine internals.

I'm unsure if I'm more impressed by the battery revival or the sheer resilience of that poor starter. What a hero. Guys, how about an episode on incrementally raising the Lada's compression ratio?

i love the wrench test across terminals before the multimeter test lmfao

"Five days lay-tair..." FUNNY!

Wow almost perfect timing was just 4 minutes late today, normally KZfaq notifications are later then this time, anyways great content love this channel🙌🏻😁

What I can't get over is how long you were able to continuously run the starter motor on that Lada without melting the windings....

We use to do that 40 + years ago. It will last about 4 to 6 months depending on the battery.

I was expecting you to say just kidding at the end but it really worked.. I’ve got to try this myself.

We have seen this happen a couple of times, and it would be considered the more common of these rare situations. For all intents and purposes, the battery will be ruined. You could technically charge it up, negatively, and continue to use it, but your plates are designed with the positive plates being lead dioxide, and the negative being composed of a sponge lead, which would now be reversed. Because the reversed battery is no longer formatted correctly, it will only work to a limited degree. The fact of the matter is, a lead acid battery cannot reverse its own polarity without an external stimulus. It is just not possible.

That's amazing, I would never have thought it possible. I'll have to try that with my ride-on mower battery, that's just about had it.

That starter is a beast fr... thats impressive as well. Good vid guys!

These guys seem like a lot of fun. I really enjoy these videos =)

i'v tried this already sometimes it works some time it dosen't.Still a great video.

Great! I don't buy everything I see and hear either, but still keep an open mind. Thanks for taking up your time to do that for us: I have a few batteries like that this now - off to find a BIG bulb to drain them quicker and then have a go too. Great project on a wet day!

The fuel heater needs a battery in good shape, that's why batteries often gets changes for a new one sort of unnecessarily. In colder cimate (Sweden) we are nearly dependent on heaters to get going in the winter.

The plates were obviously sulphated, And I bet the reverse polarity broke loose the sulphation . I remember a guy that accidentally recharged a battery and it held voltage .

love the channel!

so if you fully decharge the old battery then charge it in the normal sort of way does in work

there's a big chance that battery was sulfated to begin preventing it to take proper charge. the remedy for this is normally several days of low current charge which it got but in reverse. I know this reversing trick works but in general you can just rejuvenate a battery by proper charging methods. But it was fun to see you try this battery hack

Can you try dimpled piston (and higher compression or AF ratio), I'd love to see that comparison before after

I love you guys - you do all the experiments I think - so I don't have to!

The plates are clearly made of Stalinium. That's how they survived. 🙂

I have seen someone reving these through electroicys kind of like when they use this to remove rust. You just use this process to remove the buildup on the tinplates to make them conductive again.

Yes ive dropled them from 3' up fixing temporarily as well as drain, fkush, boil bake soda then add salt water turning into an alkaline battery then recharge and dead ones do come back excellent

According to my rough sums the demostrated battery only delivered about 10 Ahrs. But then a car engine only needs a small fraction of one Amphour to start it.

I would rather have a new reliable vehicle battery, plus they endure physical wear. But for deep cycle, solar, and UPS batteries, this is amazing! You can also use multiple batteries in parallel if you have the space to give new batteries more CCA, or a few old batteries the CCA of a new battery. It also makes jump starting someone else easier.

One of the failure modes of 12v batteries is one or more of the cells is out of sync with the others so its lower than the others. That screws up the cold cranking output of the battery because current has to flow through all cells. So discharging the battery until completely flat for two days will ensure they are all 0.0v. This is probably what restores the battery cranking current. I don't think it will help with sulphation though but boiling the acid can restore it apparently

Now reverse the polarity back to normal.

If u keep lead acid battery trickle charge to 15.4v, it should last for 15 years. After 15 years recover battery with pulsation charger and continue using it. Technically pure flooded type lead acid never dies.

I think that was more of a test for the starter motor!

One of the most clever and out of the box videos i have watched on youtube. Respect to russian brains, greetings from Greece.

Im not sure you arent heat seizing the starter, not to mention as the windings heat up the resistance goes up thus drawing less current. You can a 170a current spike from the saved battery right as the starter siezes

This is the automotive equivalent to wearing your underwear inside out and wearing it twice as long LOL.

Old trick is to make a charging circuit from 120 VAC current limited by a rectifier and 60 watt 120 volt incandescent light bulb in series. The layer of insulation between the plates now has 165 volt DC pulses pushing little streams of current cleaning them off. If the battery starts conducting the light will glow before that you get intermittant flashes. Put the battery in a box outside covered as it might explode.

From what I've seen, it's not so much inverting the polarity, it's making the corrosion on the inner terminals come off. Attach a bad battery to a stick welder to boil it's insides with high power, and it'll boil that corrosion off the insides. I think you also need a certain kind of distilled water to rejuvenate the acid.

can you do some tests on battery desulphators?

Sometimes the reversing polarity technique is better than force charging. Force charging needs a higher voltage and current to boil the electrolytes. But in the reverse technique, even at a very low voltage and current, the liquid quickly boils.

An old timer once told me this. I was skeptical. Never tried it myself. Never heard of anyone else trying it either. Good to know he was spot on.

XD the german oil cans, i dont know why but that made me laugh XD

Our family has a farm in Alberta, we have a battery that was charged backwards in 1999. Still to this day is the best battery on the property.

This is totally new to me. In the interest of science and my experiment-happy mind, I'm going to grab a battery core from my shop and try this.

Not sure if the starter getting too hot was the limit of the battery tests or the batteries themselves.

I have one deady battery like that that I brought back to life by baking in with DC welder. Had 5 cycluses of 5 min charging. 1st 25 amps, 2nd, 3rd and 4th 80 amps and 5th 100 amps. Let it cool down, drain with starter crancking engine and slowly charged it back again with 5amps charger. Works almost as new and is used in my garage as test, backup source of 12 volts.

Starting from the lead sulfate of a dead battery, either polarity is possible because there is nothing particularly fancy about either terminal except which plate becomes dominated by elemental lead (-) and which one is dominated by lead oxide (+). Probably will need to add more water to the battery after charging because the process consumes water. It's probably unsafe (fire or explosive case failure) due to different assumptions around the two phase flow venting of hydrogen.

Will this work on a battery that's been dead for a few years? Almost seems too easy. Thanks for the video!

Thank You! Awesome Work.

Try inverting the polarity another time to have original polarity then retest

That's Very Impressive!!! Now I have to try that out now!

I wonder now about the chemistry of it. I never looked in to this before. Interesting.

Dang! I only wonder how long it lasts inverted. Neat work guys 👏

The linear ion phase polarity will never allow for a battery whose grid plates have been manufactured for electron flow in a certain direction, in terms of complete percentages as required from design specifications. But, that doesn't mean you can't over come the reversal effects up to a certain percentage, for a certain amount of time.

I love that we get a montage of charging a battery for a week.

My guess is electrolysis. The plates in the battery accumulate a kind of tarnish over normal operation hindering the chemical reaction. Then when charged in reverse polarity the plates repelled and the tarnish came off them which resulted in clean plates that promoted better chemical reaction.

I love your videos and the expirements are excellent to watch. Nazdravlje iz Australia ❤

Awesome, comrade . 😊 just to think, how many batteries I’ve thrown away over the years just to find out while watching your demonstration video make me angry about the corruption in our industries. 😢 Thank you for sharing your knowledge with me.😊

Fantastic experience 👏

This is a very amazing and unexpected result. Thank you for making this video! I wonder if similar results could be achieved with a lead-acid battery.

Leave it somewhere for the porch pirates to find and then watch the show

I had someone hook the charger up the wrong way around on a set of batteries that were hooked up in series for a twenty four volt system. They went dead afterwards and I had to put jumper cables on them to start the machine but had no idea that someone had inadvertently reversed the polarity. There was some amazing sparks and heat created when you hooked up in the original polarity. I had to do the jump start several times and every time I hooked the cables and got far away quickly as I thought the batteries might explode. It was only after doing it a few times that I came to the conclusion that someone had “ charged them backwards “. I don’t recall how long they stayed in service but I know that they were re-reversed and that made things exiting. 8:59

the current drop if also from the starter getting hot starters are low duty motors i hope the starter lives

That's crazy! Hell of starter too!

Got to love the Toyota 4A-FE engines. Still starting very good and running like clockwork with 299.999 on the odometer and a repaired battery. 👍

Very good Vlad this is interesting experiment the only thing is the poor starter is taking a beating. try a different kind of resistive load like a bunch headlights or maybe heater coils from a air handler rewired heat strips for 12 volt resistive load. anyway good job testing .

Very educational and entertaining videos. Big thumbs up.

I did the start setting on the charger for 20 minutes and waited 15 minutes and did the same for 20 minutes. Brought back a 8 year old battery back and still working .I even did these on mower batteries. There is a lot of ways shown on youtube how to restore batteries.