Date:         Wed, 12 Jan 2005 17:44:55 -0800
Reply-To:     Robert Fisher <refisher@MCHSI.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Robert Fisher <refisher@MCHSI.COM>
Subject:      Battery Malfunction
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Sometime whilst my van has been sitting up with its mortally wounded tranny, it spontaneously developed a short (presumably just to spite me) and drained the battery-not completely, as I still had some power, just not enough to turn the engine over. I discovered this while I was attempting my weekly maintenance start-and-run a couple of weeks ago. Ok, my fault for not disconnecting the cables between runs, I guess. Charged the battery up well, engine fired right up, ran it for a while, shut it down, disconnected the cables this time. Came next weekend, hook up the battery, no joy. Charged it up and put the meter on it. I had a good charge, but the voltage was dropping before my eyes. Hooked it up while it still had enough juice, ran it, disconnected it. 
Went out today, the voltage was 12.06. Put the charger on it, get it up to 12.78, starts dropping again. 12.77, 76, 75 and so on, about once per second. 
The battery is under warranty and hasn't even hit the prorate period yet, so that's no biggie. I'm just wondering what happened to it just for my own edification. I've seen batteries die from being discharged past the point of recovery, etc. but I don't reckon I've seen quite this thing before- anybody wanna take a stab at it?

Cya,
Robert