bad bad battery manu [RE-wrenches]

[sunwise]

Greetings all,

I have had a lot of L-16 battery failures of late on several systems.
These were actually 8L-16s manufactured by Crown.  My battery supplier
has dropped the Crown line and switched back to Deka, admitting there
was a problem with the Crowns.

While I had a few shorted cells in regards to premature failures of the
Crowns, more recently I am seeing positive battery posts bulging up --
very weird.  One post grew in height so high it split the battery case.
My supplier says this is the result of debris falling off the plates and
building up under the bottom of the positive plate/post.

Here is what I am told that Crown themselves figured out was going on
with these failures.  The design of the plate separators was such that
they got sucked/stuck to the sides of the plates, cutting off
electrolyte access and essentially reducing the capacity of the battery.
He even said they took some that had failed and charged then hard and
long which seemed to correct the problem.  They figured the gasses
pushed the separators away from the plates, but they failed again once
back in service.

Has anyone seen the bulging positive post and does the separator seem
like it could be involved?  BTW, all the battery packs that failed were
out of warrantee, but some not by much.  I think my supplier is being
fairly honest with me and I am not demanding that they eat these.  Then
again, let's see how I feel when the Crowns I installed in my own system
a few years back also fail.

Thanks for any thoughts -- Kurt Nelson

PS -- I know Surrettes are good batteries and we could perhaps avoid the
posts about their warm and glowing attributes.

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