Archived Optima batteries deep discharge.

[MFranz]

Hi all, my batteries went into a deep discharge after being away from home a short while, ( 9 days ) . They measured a little over 5 volts inside the truck. Around 10.5 volts out of the truck. When I turned the key on I had nothing. No indicator lights,no buzzer. Totally dead. I hooked up jumpers from my other truck and didn't see any indication of anything being left on. Bought a CHARGE IT by Solar at Napa to try and bring some life back into these batteries. This is a newer electronic charger that is supposed to work with AGM batteries that have been deeply discharged. So far not much luck. The batteries are under warranty . My biggest concern is what caused the discharge and how to troubleshoot for it. Batteries are fairly new. Anyone have a similar problem and can give me some guidance to the promised land. Thanks in advance .

 

[Ozymandias]

Use a decent charger instead of that solar toy, i had some of my optimas also dead and all of them came back to life with a quality charger.
And of course search for the reason of the discharge.
Goodluck.

 

[TFucili]

Smart chargers will often not charge a deeply discharged battery. At the shop, we hook a good shop battery with jumpers to the AGM, let them equalize a while, and then put the charger on them. If they are salvageable this will bring them back.

 

[Missouri Mule]

Did you make sure the connections were tight? If you were only off by 2 volts to crank the engine up.
And how old are they?

 

[MFranz]

Well I've finally got the batteries charged up. Ones at 100% and the other is at 95%. Ozy the charger I have is what they now call a smart charger. Its made by a company named SOLAR. It's not a solar charger meaning it's not powered by the sun. Seemed to work so far. Just took me a little while to get up to speed on how to work it. Putting batteries back in truck and hopefully troubleshooting to find what caused the discharge in the first place. I'm going to try and use one battery first and put a meter in line with the positive lead to see if there is something drawing current. I'm going to start with the drivers side battery first. Thanks everyone for the response. Any ideas on what might be causing the drain?