It’s alive!
That’s not what you expect to hear from a mechanic when you hand over a dead battery.
But it may actually be true. Absorbed glass mat (AGM) batteries like the 6TAGM may
seem dead when they’re really not.
It happens when a battery’s voltage gets so low that it won’t register on a battery charger.
If you don’t know that batteries sometimes play this trick, then you’ll assume they’re totally dead.
How can you tell? Here’s a cheap and easy solution:
- Place a good battery parallel to the dead battery, positive to positive and negative to negative.
- Attach the charger’s jumper cables to the good or bad battery, positive to positive and negative to negative.
- Charge for about 15-20 minutes. That pushes amperage into the dead battery, raising the voltage high enough to register on the charger.
- Remove the good battery.
- Now charge the bad battery like you would normally.
Watch the TARDEC video on how to bring dead batteries back to life. It’s on MilTube at: