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Video Tutorial - How to Fill a Motorcycle Battery with Acid





Some sealed lead acid batteries require acid to be added to the actual battery before it is initially used in an application. We highly recommend taking the necessary precautions before installing the new battery to your bike or ATV. Safety should be the number one priority when dealing with acid. 
 
Preparation Needed:
-Safety Glasses
-Rubber Gloves
-Cardboard
-Needle Nose Pliers (optional)
 
 
A transcript of this How-To video can be found below:
 
"Hello this is Richard Price with High-Tech Battery Solutions, today we’re going to be filling a conventional lead acid battery, and i’m going to show you how to do that. First you’re going to need a few things before you get started. You’re going to need a pair of pliers to remove the caps from the battery, a pair of cutters or scissors to cut the top off the acid pack, a pair of safety glass, and also a pair of gloves to protect your hands from the acid itself. So once you’ve acquired all those things, you can begin. So, first things first, safety up... okay, oh and as a side note, i’m using two pieces of cardboard, you may want to lay down a trash bag or something just in case some acid may spill, it won’t be a ton out but its still going to be something that could possibly ruin a surface or strip the paint from something so I always recommend using something to catch the acid incase it does come out. So remove the battery first, the nuts/bolts, overflow tube as well as the acid pack, so before you do anything, we’re going to remove this venting cap, this is very important, you never want to leave this on once the battery is filled. We’ll remove that then remove the actual caps of the battery. Now anytime you’re removing nuts/bolts or caps you always want to put them back in the box that way you never lose it. Okay the battery is good to go. So now we’re taking out the actual acid. Okay, so once you remove the acid from the pack from the actual plastic wrap here you’re going to see that its melted off at the end so it can’t come out, that’s the part we’re going to cut off. Just the very top so the acid can flow freely, we’re going to remove the acid tube here. Now when you’re cutting this its very important that you’re not putting pressure on this at all, if you’re squeezing it, acid will pour out, so hold it from the top of the pack and cut it off very carefully. Just like that, round it off. Okay, now you can attach your tube to the top of the acid pack what this does is allow for an easier pour into the battery itself. Now if you take a look at the top six cells, we’re going to fill each individual cell up to this top line, there’s two lines called the top line and the upper fill line. We always want to hit this upper fill line that’s going to cover the entire lead plate with acid and give the maximum exposure. So to begin, hold the acid pack from the bottom make sure you’re not squeezing the bottle and you’re going to pinch it here so no acid will be able to leak out when you’re tilting it to put it in the hole, go ahead and put it in the first one. Now the cid is going to flow freely through the tube but if you wanted to speed this process up then you could squeeze it gently here. And when you’re done you want to squeeze the tube prior to pulling it out and then pull it out and angle the pack back down, so we’ll continue this... alright, I’m going to finish filling this battery and we’re going to fast forward until the very end. I’ll talk to you then. Okay, we’ve finished filling the battery and we’ve let it sit for about 15 minutes or so which is something you have to do to let the acid settle. Now after the 15 minute period, check the upper fill line to make sure that all your cells are up to that line, after the 15 minute period some of the acid will absorb into the spots that it wasn’t getting into before so you do want to double check that, we’ve already done that here. The last step is to put this battery on charge, now you’ve already filled it but that doesn’t mean that its ready to go. The acid is positively charged so it will bring the charge level up to maybe 40% or 50% but you will need to put it on charge to get it to the full 100. So for this we’re going to be leaving the caps off so the battery is well ventilated. For the sake of the video we’re using the CTEK US 3300 Charger, we’re going to hook that up. Typical charge time on this batteries depends on what type of charger you’re using, if you’re using a small trickle charger it could take 12-16 hours to fully charge up. If you’re using a slightly higher rated charger like the US 3300 or maybe even the NOCO G3500 it may take only a few hours max. So always make sure you check the charger, all chargers will have a status indicator on there for when the battery is fully charged and ready to go. I appreciate you watching this video and thats how you fill a motorcycle battery."

 
 
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