I got a little story for you all, and hopefully someone can help me understand what happened:
This at least 17 year old generic cheapo big box autoparts store 12-volt battery I have been using has been just "short" (pun intended...keep reading) of amazing. At about age 5, the battery ceased to be a reliable starting battery, but would always take a charge and function as it should for about a month at a time before discharging to about 70%. It would always easily take a charge back up to 100%. The vehicle does not get out or run that often so the battery does not get adequate charging from the vehicle alternator. Just the other day, I attempted to start the aforementioned vehicle and nothing. Put a charger on the battery and it indicated only 10% charge.... So I plugged in the charger and went about my day, checking periodically and at one point the charger indicated that the battery was 70% charged. Came back several hours later and the charger had a flashing "bad bat" message, something I had never seen from this charging machine before. This morning, the battery has only 10% percent charge. What happened so suddenly? Yeah I know this box of lead energizer bunny has been living on borrowed time for well over a decade, but what physically happened for it to change so drastically? My guess is that it finally sulfated and shorted out, but if so, why does it still carry a 10% charge?
