MBA 2008 shutting down on battery

[JasonStonier]

I have an A1237 2008 MBA which I was given as scrap with a dead battery.

I am out in the African bush where new batteries are somewhat hard to come by, so I bought a new battery from the USA. Now I bought an original Apple battery, but what finally arrived a couple of months later was a cheap Chinese compatible. Needless to say I got a full refund from eBay, and have been using the battery because I have no other options.

It was never very good - I would be lucky to get 2 hours of very light use to a charge. After 30 charge cycles the battery health was about 75%. I've been running the Mac for about 3 months now. It's normally left on the power adapter.

Fast forward to today, I took the mac off the power adapter to use it mobile, and after a minute it crashed out, just turning off. I restarted it on battery and it booted fine (battery showing 93% charge) but then crashed out again after around a minute.

I reset the SMC (the magsafe light went green) and rebooted on power, and it booted fine but was showing the battery not charging. It crashed out immediately on removing the magsafe. I reset the SMC again and booted, and now the battery is charging but VERY slowly - showing 4:30 hours remaining to charge from 93%. The battery health is now reading 91% (it's jumped up from the 75% it was saying).

Pulling it off power makes it crash out immediately.

Now my guess is that the battery is just dead and giving false information to the SMC - perhaps it simply has no charge.

Can anyone suggest any test I can try, or make any other suggestions to find out what is wrong?

Thanks, Jason

 

[wolfpuppies3]

Sure, replace that cheap battery with a genuine Apple battery.

 

[JasonStonier]

Gosh! Now why didn't I think of that??! Definitely wasted my four years of tertiary education there...

Obviously that's the best solution, but for example the nearest place to buy a bottle of coke is a half-hour drive away. The nearest Apple store is 2000 miles and two countries away. The nearest place I can get eBay stuff delivered to is 8000 miles away.

I am pretty much certain it's the battery at fault, but I am looking for a way to test it before I go ahead and buy another battery.

Thanks,

 

[Mrbobb]

You already know the answer but are fighting the inevitable.

The battery meter is calibrated for a normal working battery. At the end of a battery's life, the meter is useless as an information provider.

Seen it many times, one minute it tells you 100% (see previous paragraph), next minute, DARK. Perfect normal behavior for a near-dead third party battery.

That's a downside of Macbooks for field work. U can't buy a battery from Apple.