On 08/16/05 01:14 pm Ed tossed the following ingredients into the
ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

The battery has now been on charge for about 20 hours at the charger's
12A setting, but most of the time the ammeter on the charger has shown
only about 5A. The cells are all still gassing.

Is this battery likely to come back to life again, or is it toast? Any
remedial actions to take?

It sounds to me that it is likely to survive, but I hope you
are not over charging?! I assume you are also monitoring the voltage? To
be sure how it turns out, you really ought to get a guage to measure the
specific gravity of the electrolyte in each cell and check. Should be
available cheap at auto supply stores.

You are probably correct in suggesting a hydrometer. But I should have
mentioned that the "fully charged" LED has not yet illuminated again;
I'm assuming that that is supposed to indicate that the appropriate
voltage has been reached. With the charger disconnected, I read 13.4V --
still a little low, I think.

Also, although I mentioned that the battery had been on "trickle charge"
for all that time, I was in fact using the specific "Automatic -- Deep
Cycle" setting of the charger, which I "assumed" (there's that word
again) was "supposed to" (and that phrase again) prevent overcharging.

Perce