Battery Vehicle Society

I am tying to resurrect a van which has been unused for several years. The guage charges up to 100% but I only get good speed to 90% then completely dead at 75%. Is this likely to improve by repeated use or do I need to work on the cells?

Hello RORY, unfortunately you have got battery problems, there is or are short circuits in one or more of the packs, probably why whoever had the van before you gave it up.
There's realy only one thing for it and that is to follow GRUMPYS old posts of running the whole pack down and the leg it round all of the packs with an volt meter and find out which are the bad ones, pretty well guarantee the dreaded centre pack will be the biggest culprit, our POLISH friend HIGHEND can supply good replacement cells so contact him for replacements, best of luck lots of dammed hard work ahead but worth it I think,tip if you have to remove the dreaded centre pack is to use bath silicone on ALL the water joints before you put the top back on the big pack particularly those weird oblong water joints onto the manifolds, cheers HARRY MORRIS.

I do have some usable cells in stock, but not many. Dead at 75% is probably between 2 and 4 cells, as Harry says follow the route to getting the van to cut out then do the separate tests, then you can see which boxes have the problems and a extent to the problem, by the low voltages. Not definitive but at least you then know which boxes to take out.
Grumpy-b