What to do with old Armasafe batteries?

So my 1097A2 came with two dead Armasafe Plus batteries from 2011. They're currently deader than dead, showing 0.6v a piece.

Is their any reason to keep them around? Can they be brought back to life? I've noticed even used ones are pricey, but these are dead as a doornail.

I traded mine as cores for Wally World replacements.

Jinx said:

I traded mine as cores for Wally World replacements.

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Likewise. The guy behind the counter looked at them funny and couldn't hardly lift them, but still accepted them as cores.

Take em to a scrap yard and ask what they will give for them. Here in Germany, I can eat lunch for a week or longer on what I could get for them.

1: I save all larger / heavier batteries (typically everything more than 700ca) and they go to a scrap yard.. Price ranges from twelve to twenty-five cents a pound here depending on the market . About 10yrs ago I was at a point where I had accumulated enough to fill a M100 jeep trailer and walk away with a couple hundred bucks

2: Some auto parts places like O'Reilly's pay you $10 per batt regardless of size and regardless whether you buy a new one.. They are encouraged to take your batteries for recycling and I do this with smaller batteries that have less than $10 scrap value per weight

3: I knew a fella who restored failed batts... He would drain them, dry them inverted several weeks, shake out the corrosion, test for shorted plates, refill & restore the batts , and sell them

Newer Armasafes can be brought back to life. It’s a weeks long process.

About 15 years ago I had a weird situation on a M52 where i was using it a couple days a week in winter thus i rarely disconnected its ground cable.. Went to start it one day and they were deader than dead so they got swapped out and all was fine.

I discovered one battery had shorted plates , but when i put the other 3 dead ones on chargers, two were taking just fine but the 3rd battery sparked like mad when i attached the final alligator clip.. I double-checked my polarity and it was correct, but it still sparked like mad ..

Just for giggles i swapped the clips around, expecting a REALLY big spark... But no spark and it started to take a reverse-polarity charge (!) .. Never had seen this before but google can be a good thing sometimes... I soon learned i wasn't imagining things, this was a real situation others have seen, learned how to get the polarity restored on a battery, and it worked..

Apparently the internally-shorted battery drew all the others down and somehow made one of them go into reverse polarity .. So weird ! .. Has anyone here seen this situation?

NDT said:

Newer Armasafes can be brought back to life. It’s a weeks long process.

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Please share.

Eric Hummer H1 has a pair and I’d like to help him restore them.

TOBASH said:

Please share.

Eric Hummer H1 has a pair and I’d like to help him restore them.

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Obtain an AGM maintainer, connect it to the dead battery. The maintainer will say "Battery is flatlined". Obtain a GOOD agm battery and connect the two batteries IN PARALLEL. (positive to positive, negative to negative). Reconnect the maintainer. This time the maintainer will see voltage and begin defibrillation as I call it (sends high voltage alternating current pulses to the battery to break up crystals on the plates). This will take days/weeks. At some point, the GOOD agm battery can be removed from the circuit, you will know the patient battery is coming to life as it will have voltage that the maintainer will see. Continue with the maintainer until the patient battery passes a current test.

While we are on the topic of ancient Armasafes, I JUST had a 2011 battery die after around 8 years on the maintainer. It was fine until one day the maintainer said "load present" and sure enough the battery case was warm. Voltage dropped off after a day off the maintainer. Bye old friend.

Obtain an AGM maintainer, connect it to the dead battery. The maintainer will say "Battery is flatlined". Obtain a GOOD agm battery and connect the two batteries IN PARALLEL. (positive to positive, negative to negative). Reconnect the maintainer. This time the maintainer will see voltage and begin defibrillation as I call it (sends high voltage alternating current pulses to the battery to break up crystals on the plates). This will take days/weeks. At some point, the GOOD agm battery can be removed from the circuit, you will know the patient battery is coming to life as it will have voltage that the maintainer will see. Continue with the maintainer until the patient battery passes a current test.


Super correct! Any AGM that is DEAD, needs to be charged this way. Mostly I leave them several hours in parallel and then take the "good" battery out of the circuit. The AGM charger MUST SEE some kind of a voltage, to start trying to recover the dead battery. It can take several days, or longer to bring it back to life. An Armasafe Tec. Rep. once told me he took 100 Armasafe batteries out of DRMO down range. 97 or them he could recover. Just like written above.

I will try this…I just donated probably 10 or more AGM Hawkers. The interstate dealer requires a one for one core swap, if you don’t have a like for like, its 2 standard lead acid car batteries per one 6TL.
Ive recovered Hawkers in the past, unfortunately they won’t hold a load, i used an older battery charger that didnt monitor the output and required at least 11-12 volts to start charging,

Armasafe has an extremely over priced battery charging system that is one of the best I ever saw. Let you do 6 batteries at a time. I found one in the corner of 173 Abn, 3159 Arty motor pool. After listening to the Armasafe guy, I tried it out. Everyone laughed at me. Dead is dead. I must say, after I had saved a few batteries, the DS2 Site Lead rolled the battery charger out of my bay, and over to his. I was only a "Guest" there. But at least they kept saving batteries after that. And do not get impatient. Some took 3 days, 24/7. Some took 6-7 days. Put it in a corner and let it ride.

Thanks guys. I'll give that charging method a try and see what happens. I have nothing to lose.

It really does work. When I received my M1030M1 diesel motorcycle it had an Odyssey AGM battery in it. Dead as a doornail. Using the recovery process. I was able to save the battery, but it took over a week. I was able to use the battery for almost a year and a half before it really did die for good.

A quality charger like the multi-function NOCO's will bring them back. Alternate charge mode and repair mode when you pass by. Might take a month, literally, but an $800 battery is worth it. Haven't seen one yet that didn't respond, unless physically damaged.