Soaring

ZZ......batteries are not "Sealed." It is imperative to have the gasses escape whenever pressure mounts. Therefore the "caps." Either each cell is capped individually or several are capped together, but they are still not "sealed." Here is a pic of my Interstate battery I bought last year. See the caps? Please do not unhook the positive cable when the engine is running. That is not good advice, and certainly not something that a mechanic would do.


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ZZmustang

A $600. system is always the way to go. I grew up with NO money and had to figure stuff out on my own.

ZZmustang

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Old batteries have removable caps as individuals or as a group. Sealed batteries are not really new but newer. They work upside down.
Go to any of the battery manufactures and put sealed car batteries in their search. I have one for my car. its yellow and has no caps. [/align][align=left][/align]

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Soaring

Yeah, you are right ZZ. I can't afford those.

gothand

Who is running a sealed battery in their early Mustang? I have always had them in my Jeep (both the Odyssey by Hawker pictured and the Optima Red and Blue tops) because I don't want acid spilling all over when I get it on its side. Also, they seem to hold up better under the jarring offroad and I run a winch which draws 450 amps. On an early Mustang, I don't know.

Anyway, I thought the guy already replaced his battery so that brings things back to a short in the car, no?

[edit] Just re-read the guy's original post and this has happened several times with his old battery and new batteries ... after a few trips around the block! Who gives a flying flip how to test if the alternator is charging if he has such a large draw coming from somewhere on the vehicle? FWIW, and I have to preface this by saying that it happened in a Range Rover (Lucas, Prince of Darkness), but the positive lead came off my brother-in-law's Rover offroad and it took out his charging system. That probably doesn't relate to this because that thing was such a POS, but why chance it?

mikethebike

Well, since the amperage is determined by the voltage/resistance....12 volts won't do a thing to you.....but the arc at disconnect could ignite the hydrogen gas being given-off by the battery.

onuliakattack

I started up the car and checked the voltage at the battery and it said 8.5 which i know is about half of what it should be, so either the alternator is a dud or its wiring?

kalli

works just fine. done a million times.
the only risk here is that if you remove the positive side first, your metal tool might hit ground (bare metal) at the same time (accidentally).
You'll have your tool red glowing instantly and you can severly burn your hand as well as fry your battery.
The same counts if the car is not running.

So ALWAYS start with negative side first (I haven't heard of someone accidentally hitting the plus side with the tool at the same time so far)

as to disconnecting the battery while car is running. with such a car no problem.
With a modern car you run the risk of voltage peaks ruining your injection computer or any other. The battery usually takes the peaks

it's a very valid test to check on the alternator on old cars. you don't know how high the charging amps are, but you know the generator is at least kinda charging.
You might as well stress it with putting on the full lights and radio or whatever.

Another method is to just hook up a voltage meter to a battery. All cables connected. voltage higher than when car is not running->generator ok.
This is not a 100% valid test. but works 99% of all times.

The only valid test is to disconnect minus of battery. hook ampmeter between minuscable and batteryminus and see how much amps are flowing into the battery.

kalli