Buying A New Battery and Checking An Old One

Several weeks ago, I started getting a message on my Dell Inspirion laptop telling me that the “useful life of my battery was nearing an end”.  This message, at startup, went on for months but it didn’t concern me because I never run it in battery mode anyway – it’s always plugged into AC power.

This is the original 9 cell lithium ion battery that was in my Dell Inspirion

Then, just a few days ago, things got a bit more serious as a new message popped up saying that my battery could “no longer hold a charge and must be replaced”.  I would have ignored that too except for the fact that the battery indicator light started flashing red and wouldn’t stop.  I finally was able to turn the flashing red light off by simply removing the battery altogether.

I began thinking that since I’m going to have this laptop for another year, I probably should get a new battery for it as it just might come in handy on our trip south especially since we’ll have an air card this time.  So, I went to the Dell website to check their prices and was shocked - $199 for a new Dell 9-cell lithium ion battery!   Yikes – for a few hundred dollars more, I could buy a brand new mini-notebook computer!

My next stop was e-Bay and there I had more luck.  I found a 9-cell lithium ion battery, compatible with my Dell laptop, for the very reasonable price of $38 – that’s more like it!  The seller, Iaxtech, has sold over 1,800 items with a 99.7% positive feedback, so I’m reasonably satisfied that the product is good and the seller is fine too.  The company is located in California and I was happy to see my new battery was shipped out the day after I ordered it.  It comes with a 2 yr. warranty so it should easily last me for the life of my current laptop computer.

One of these days, I’ll get around to adding a 2nd battery in this compartment While I was dealing with batteries, I remembered that I hadn’t done my usual 1st of the month check of our 5th wheel battery.  I made a note to do that, at the time, and since it was a nice afternoon yesterday, I thought that would be as good a time as any. It’s a little less than 6 weeks now until we head south, so it’s time to start making sure everything is working and in good shape.

I checked the electrolyte levels in all the cells and everything looked perfect

In order to properly check the water level in our 12 volt battery, I need to take it out of the compartment, which is a bit of a pain, but it only takes a minute.  When I first started using my hydrometer, about 4 years ago, to check the electrolyte solution in our battery, I didn’t have a clue about what I was doing, or why. 

So, I looked in my RV Handbook(an essential guide for the RV’er) and read that lead acid batteries are made up of plates, lead, and lead oxide with a 35% sulfuric acid and 65% water solution. This solution is called electrolyte, which causes a chemical reaction that produce electrons.

The hydrometer measures the amount of sulfuric acid in the electrolyte. If your reading is low, that means the chemistry that makes electrons is lacking. So where did the sulfur go? It is resting on the battery plates and when you recharge the battery, the sulfur returns to the electrolyte. 

Anyway, I did the test on all the cells and my battery checked out 100%, so that was good.  While I was at it, I got an old toothbrush and a small container of water and baking soda and gave the battery terminals and the connectors a good scrubbing to get rid of any traces of corrosion. 

That’s 2 days in a row now I’ve actually done something productive – it must be time for a day off soon!  Have a great Wednesday, and thanks for visiting!