Frozen Dead Battery

Truck has sat for over a week and temps are around 0 Deg F.  Battery is deader than a door nail. Before it dawned on me that the battery could be frozen, I tried charging it for many hours only to discover it was still dead. At first I though that it was the stupid smart battery charger that continuously cycles and was heading to the store to find an old style one that simply just charges no matter what. I am going to bring the battery inside tomorrow and thaw it out and try to charge it afterwards.

batterystory.com: HOW TO BRING A FROZEN BATTERY BACK TO LIFE

Problem with them freezing is they can break plates loose, letting them touch each other which, for me would be fine, but less so with batteries apparently. 

I wouldn't risk trying to salvage that battery.  If it's been frozen, as far as I'm concerned, it's scrap.  Way too much risk of a shorted cell after that and I wouldn't want to play games with anything that could cause a battery meltdown or explosion (they do happen and they're nasty). 

If it froze, it's junk. Could have a crack in the case and leak acid when it thaws out. Replace it and not have to worry about it failing when You really need it. 

0F shouldn't be cold enough to freeze a battery or even stop it from working, a normal lead-acid battery with proper electrolyte and a normal charge level should work down to about -4F and shouldn't freeze solid until somewhere below that. I leave batteries outside without a second thought because I'm confident they won't see temperatures below -4F.

Maybe put it somewhere where it won't cause damage if it leaks out or blows up and then consider keeping it as an emergency spare/jump battery if it looks good at above-freezing temperatures...but if it did freeze solid you can't trust it, especially if it was being charged when frozen. If it became discharged somehow the electrolyte could freeze at closer to 30F.

Thanks for the advise. I think it has gotten to -10F over the last couple of weeks. I wonder if the remote car starter is draining the battery waiting for a signal. I will replace it because I have experienced an exploding battery before after the boat battery left us stranded during the midnight boating excursion - Gilligan's Island episode 3.

After replacing the battery in the boat, I charged up the old one and it took and held a charge so I put it in my Volvo 1800 where it has been relocated into the trunk and when I tried to start it, it exploded as soon as there was a large current draw. Unfortunately, I didn't put it in the plastic battery box and it took 6 boxes of baking soda and gallons of water to clean up the mess.

I have let batteries freeze before and got them to work well enough for a poor 17 year old kid by putting them in a tub of hot water overnight, then charging.

That'll learn ya to let a car stay outside in the winter without a battery tender.

....crud, I never put my RX-7 on a tender

What am I missing? I drove when it routinely got deep in the negative F range for years and never parked inside.

tuna55 said:

What am I missing? I drove when it routinely got deep in the negative F range for years and never parked inside.

Fully charged flooded lead acid batteries don't freeze easily.  The freezing point of the electrolyte gets higher as the battery charge gets lower.  So if the car is driven frequently and the battery stays close to topped off, it's fine.  But if it sits a lot and has any meaningful parasitic draw, the battery can end up low enough to freeze. 

Which begs the question of what battery tender to buy?

rslifkin said:

tuna55 said:

What am I missing? I drove when it routinely got deep in the negative F range for years and never parked inside.

Fully charged flooded lead acid batteries don't freeze easily.  The freezing point of the electrolyte gets higher as the battery charge gets lower.  So if the car is driven frequently and the battery stays close to topped off, it's fine.  But if it sits a lot and has any meaningful parasitic draw, the battery can end up low enough to freeze. 

Sure, I get that, but as an informative point, due to gas not being free and parking being difficult, I drove my bike to school while in College in Michigan. My truck just sat there for weeks on end, all winter. The battery life seemed typical.

In reply to VolvoHeretic :

Find something that simulates running a car- well other than the massive cranking load.  Some nominal light amp charging, and you can even put it on a simple timer if you want.  I'm betting there are YT reviews that show the charge cycle.

tuna55 said:

rslifkin said:

tuna55 said:

What am I missing? I drove when it routinely got deep in the negative F range for years and never parked inside.

Fully charged flooded lead acid batteries don't freeze easily.  The freezing point of the electrolyte gets higher as the battery charge gets lower.  So if the car is driven frequently and the battery stays close to topped off, it's fine.  But if it sits a lot and has any meaningful parasitic draw, the battery can end up low enough to freeze. 

Sure, I get that, but as an informative point, due to gas not being free and parking being difficult, I drove my bike to school while in College in Michigan. My truck just sat there for weeks on end, all winter. The battery life seemed typical.

Your truck didn't have parasitic to drain the charge- so the nominal charge will just sit there and be happy.  

An old truck likely had very close to zero parasitic draw, so it would probably take a month or more for the battery to self-discharge enough to be of concern.  Modern vehicles all have at least a little bit of parasitic draw, so it's a different story. 

As far as battery tenders, I like the small Battery Minder units.  I've got a couple of the 1510 models around.  They're temperature compensated and do an appropriate job of keeping things topped off in my experience. 

rslifkin said:

An old truck likely had very close to zero parasitic draw, so it would probably take a month or more for the battery to self-discharge enough to be of concern.  Modern vehicles all have at least a little bit of parasitic draw, so it's a different story. 

As far as battery tenders, I like the small Battery Minder units.  I've got a couple of the 1510 models around.  They're temperature compensated and do an appropriate job of keeping things topped off in my experience. 

OK folks, I'll bow out, but I don't agree with this being typical. I would investigate more before I condemn based on temperature. Lots and lots of people are parking outside for varying lengths of time in cold climates without battery tenders.

I think that a bad diode in an alternator can also discharge a battery by back flowing electrons.

How old was the battery it could have been on its last legs anyway.

Living in central Minnesota and working on hundreds of cars over the last 40 years. A DEAD battery will freeze and the expansion of the resulting ice will cause internal damage. A charged battery will not freeze. We have had temps in the -30 to -40 range and the batteries did not freeze unless someone ran the battery down while continuing to attempt to start the engine.  

It's less than 3 years old I think. It was also a 6 year warranty premium model.

tuna55 said:

rslifkin said:

An old truck likely had very close to zero parasitic draw, so it would probably take a month or more for the battery to self-discharge enough to be of concern.  Modern vehicles all have at least a little bit of parasitic draw, so it's a different story. 

As far as battery tenders, I like the small Battery Minder units.  I've got a couple of the 1510 models around.  They're temperature compensated and do an appropriate job of keeping things topped off in my experience. 

OK folks, I'll bow out, but I don't agree with this being typical. I would investigate more before I condemn based on temperature. Lots and lots of people are parking outside for varying lengths of time in cold climates without battery tenders.

Freezing is only a problem if the vehicle sits with a dead battery.  Left the lights on, was sitting in the car listening to the radio, bad alternator and it died on the side of the road, whathaveyou.

Living here in Edmonton my car is always parked outside but mind you it doesn't get parked for long periods. I dint plus it in at 0 Fahrenheit. That's about minus 17 Celsius. It's over minus 20 Celsius before we plug in. And I got 10 years on the factory battery in my cobalt.

In reply to MotorsportsGordon :

Same rule I use. When the temp goes below -20C then I'll plug in/heat up the battery just so that I can be sure it will work. It would need to be a few degrees colder before I'd start to worry about a battery freezing completely.

FWIW, I found out that our loaner Civic had a remote start.

I found out because the battery would die if the vehicle wasn't loaned out regularly.  The remote start itself was drawing around 80ma.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

FWIW, I found out that our loaner Civic had a remote start.

I found out because the battery would die if the vehicle wasn't loaned out regularly.  The remote start itself was drawing around 80ma.

That's an enormous amount of power for a remote start.  Even vehicles with tons of fancy electronics typically draw less than that in total once stuff goes to sleep a few minutes after you walk away from the car. 

When we have our cold spells here I don't use remote start I'll just manually start it. This way I can run it longer and warm it up more plus then I can turn off the headlights which will use up less battery.