On Wednesday, December 17, 2014 1:11:48 PM UTC-5, Danny D. wrote:
CRNG wrote, on Mon, 15 Dec 2014 04:17:46 -0600:

That doesn't look good at all.

I did have the battery checked:
https://c4.staticflickr.com/8/7543/1...7ae3c7de_c.jpg

It's from 2010 & it has a slight bulge (probably froze at some point?).

The parts guy instantly pronounced it dead on sight, but, I had charged
it up the night before on a 6-amp charger and it seemed to be taking
2 amps without issue and holding a charge under the open-circuit
no-load test of a voltmeter.

I had the Kragen/O'Reilly guy test it under load on his battery tester,
which took about 10 minutes, and the report came back as "Good", but
that the battery was on its last "quarter of life".

Given that the battery is 4 years old, I'm sure it *is* on its last
quarter but I asked if they input the date, and they said no, so,
the machine must be evaluating the dynamics of the battery under load.

It has an easy life though. It just sits there and starts the generator
once a week, and gets charged for 20 minutes to repay it for its
effort.

It's being charged/maintained 24/7 by the generator controller using
AC line power. It doesn't need the generator running to charge it.
Four years old, on the last quarter of it's life per the load test,
it's already been taken out, critical need in a power outage, seems like
an easy decision to me.