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Brand new battery from 2003 wont charge past 30%

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rrutter81
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Brand new battery from 2003 wont charge past 30%

#1 Post by rrutter81 » Sat Mar 19, 2022 6:50 am

For entertainment ( and youtube )purposes, i bought a brand new thinkpad battery (02k7054) in hopes of benchmarking it against a self refurbished 2022 battery.
The battery registers that it was first used march of 2022 with 0 cycles, but the battery will max out at 30% and then stop charging. The battery indicator led always stays amber, not green.
I depleted the battery to 0 just to hopefully clear any memory issues, but sure enough, it charges to 30% and then stops. Its like it wont hold a charge.
Is there a way i can do a deep cycle reset?
Is it as i was hypothizing and that 20 year old batteries cant hold a charge?
I have tried charging this battery with 3 different r40s with the same result.


thanks!

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Re: Brand new battery from 2003 wont charge past 30%

#2 Post by ajkula66 » Sat Mar 19, 2022 7:48 am

Welcome to the forum!

Yeah, after almost 20 years that's not going to go well with a NOS battery.

Run it down completely and then try to recharge, but don't expect miracles. Batteries don't age gracefully.

Good luck.
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Re: Brand new battery from 2003 wont charge past 30%

#3 Post by theterminator93 » Sat Mar 19, 2022 7:50 am

Lithium batteries begin to lose permanent full charge capacity as soon as they are manufactured. The rate at which they do so depends on exact chemistry and storage conditions. In fact, when lithium batteries self-discharge too much and the cell voltage drops beyond a certain point, they are permanently discharged and cannot be recharged.

It's not surprising that a 20-year-old battery only holds a small portion of its new design capacity. I would also not surprised to hear if some of the cells in the pack died due to being stored too long without being periodically charged, after experiencing an undervoltage condition.
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rrutter81
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Re: Brand new battery from 2003 wont charge past 30%

#4 Post by rrutter81 » Sat Mar 19, 2022 8:35 am

thanks for the welcome and the confirmation of what i expected.
I was just hoping there was some secret deep cycle i could perform to get it back up to snuff.
Running the battery down to 0 a couple of times and recharging it resulted in the same 30% before it stops.
Oh well. At least i have another pcb/shell to refurbish.
Would have been fun to pit a brand new 20 year old battery against a self-refurbished one 🤣
i still may do it since it technically was never used.

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Re: Brand new battery from 2003 wont charge past 30%

#5 Post by kfzhu1229 » Sat Mar 19, 2022 3:34 pm

I am unsure how this would work in a R40, but for T23, T30, T4x series for instance, you can use the power manager and it would tell you what your battery's current voltage and current is. If you already see something like 12.5V then the battery is fully charged at 30% and that's your actual capacity.
If it is under, you could also have severe cell voltage inbalance, in which it won't charge up properly and you need to crack open the battery and charge/discharge certain groups individually to balance them.
If you already have experience by cracking open your so called refurbished battery pack and are willing to take some risks and doing this for science, you may have to crack this one open and do the CID resets to each cell. This is just for science and the risks for using a CID reset battery cell are there. If you see visible corrosion on the cell body, the cell is most probably toast.
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Re: Brand new battery from 2003 wont charge past 30%

#6 Post by RealBlackStuff » Sun Mar 20, 2022 12:55 am

Don't forget that the R40 was made by Acer and only re-badged with an IBM-sticker.
Acer is well-known for its poor quality, which part-explains your charging problems.
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Re: Brand new battery from 2003 wont charge past 30%

#7 Post by dr_st » Sun Mar 20, 2022 10:10 am

How are Acer-made Thinkpads different than Wistron/Quanta/Compal-made Thinkpads? What evidence is there that Acer is worse than the lot?

Besides, Wistron seems to be a spin-off of Acer. I managed to forget that already. :wink:
viewtopic.php?p=830374#p830374

And the R40, apparently, is LG-manufactured, not even Acer. :lol:
viewtopic.php?p=830388#p830388
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Re: Brand new battery from 2003 wont charge past 30%

#8 Post by mikemex » Sun Mar 20, 2022 3:57 pm

I recently bought a NOS T420 battery from 2011. I put it in, let it fully charge, and it's working great. Original capacity is around 94 Wh, it keeps 88Wh, I'd say it's pretty good for what it is.

The key to lithium batteries is to never let them discharge too much. It damages the battery irreversibly. And that's exactly what happens when you keep it in storage for many years.

Storage conditions also influence logenvity. Cool storage protects it, warm damages it.
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Re: Brand new battery from 2003 wont charge past 30%

#9 Post by rrutter81 » Sun Mar 20, 2022 8:04 pm

https://youtu.be/i-u3ej_Yxa8

i went through with it and made a video anyway.

didnt matter how many times i charged or discharged the battery it always happened the same.

27%->0 instantly and then watch with popcorn.
even unplugging and plugging the battery back in, i never got more than 8 minutes of battery

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Re: Brand new battery from 2003 wont charge past 30%

#10 Post by axur-delmeria » Sun Mar 20, 2022 10:14 pm

rrutter81 wrote:
Sun Mar 20, 2022 8:11 pm
27%->0 instantly and then watch with popcorn.
even unplugging and plugging the battery back in, i never got more than 8 minutes of battery
There's definitely a bad lithium cell inside that battery pack.
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Re: Brand new battery from 2003 wont charge past 30%

#11 Post by rrutter81 » Mon Mar 21, 2022 4:12 am

axur-delmeria wrote:
Sun Mar 20, 2022 10:14 pm
rrutter81 wrote:
Sun Mar 20, 2022 8:11 pm
27%->0 instantly and then watch with popcorn.
even unplugging and plugging the battery back in, i never got more than 8 minutes of battery
There's definitely a bad lithium cell inside that battery pack.
id agree except it actually can hold a charge.
the first one i bought "new" stayed at 0% with a failed cell.

either way, ill open it up with a volt meter and see wtf the issue is.

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Re: Brand new battery from 2003 wont charge past 30%

#12 Post by axur-delmeria » Mon Mar 21, 2022 5:02 am

rrutter81 wrote:
Mon Mar 21, 2022 4:12 am
axur-delmeria wrote:
Sun Mar 20, 2022 10:14 pm


There's definitely a bad lithium cell inside that battery pack.
id agree except it actually can hold a charge.
the first one i bought "new" stayed at 0% with a failed cell.

either way, ill open it up with a volt meter and see wtf the issue is.
Laptop battery packs are usually built with at least 3 lithium cells wired in series, resulting in a nominal voltage of 10.8v (3.6v cells) or 11.1v (3.7v cells). To increase capacity, sets of 3 cells in series are wired in parallel. If one of those cells go bad, you'll get issues like the 27%->0 you mentioned before.

The one that got stuck at 0% simply had self-discharged to a voltage low enough that the BMS (battery management system) considers it unsafe to use. The BMS is the circuit board in the pack that monitors the status of the cells it's connected to, and is generally programmed to err on the side of caution in order to prevent incidents like catching fire while charging.
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Re: Brand new battery from 2003 wont charge past 30%

#13 Post by Scrolls » Mon Mar 21, 2022 4:26 pm

I know that this probably isn't super helpful, but the (original factory) battery in my G41 was dying after 30 minutes. When I used the battery calibration utility in windows 2000 it suddenly could live for two hours and was even able to play half life off wall power without forcing shutdown :D . So in my opinion, running it all the way down and then charging it all night COULD help. If it doesn't, I'm not well read enough on batteries to give you any advice that wouldn't cause a fire.

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Re: Brand new battery from 2003 wont charge past 30%

#14 Post by rrutter81 » Mon Mar 21, 2022 7:11 pm

Scrolls wrote:
Mon Mar 21, 2022 4:26 pm
I know that this probably isn't super helpful, but the (original factory) battery in my G41 was dying after 30 minutes. When I used the battery calibration utility in windows 2000 it suddenly could live for two hours and was even able to play half life off wall power without forcing shutdown :D . So in my opinion, running it all the way down and then charging it all night COULD help. If it doesn't, I'm not well read enough on batteries to give you any advice that wouldn't cause a fire.

-Scrolls
ive run these batteries to 0 and charged them several times, but ill give your idea a shot!
not like itll make it worse. good call!

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Re: Brand new battery from 2003 wont charge past 30%

#15 Post by Sweater Fish Deluxe » Tue Mar 29, 2022 9:13 pm

I've never seen a battery fail in a way that it doesn't still report 100% when it's fully charged. Instead, the maximum capacity in Wh usually just gets lower, but they'll still charge and discharge from 0 to 100%. What Wh capacity does this battery report?

I picked up a new old stock X61 battery last year that's in perfect shape. It still has 100% of the manufactured capacity and I've discharged it several times to confirm that it really does match that. It's not as old as a R40, but still pretty good, so I guess there's at least some of them around if you get lucky.

My understanding is that truly new and unused batteries are in a chemically different state, so they don't degrade in the same way that a used battery does when stored. Not to say that they don't ever degrade at all, but just that they're a lot more stable before they take their first charge.

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