Battery reliability POLL

Seems I’ve seen quite a few comments on premature battery failure on our trucks. For me personally I noticed my short-term memory had been cleared and DTCs reset on my OBD2 scanner. Popped the hood and sure enough it looks as though my battery has a leak, corrosion on the bracket and terminals. Still has enough charge to spark it for the moment but I’m damn glad I caught that before I got stranded on some 5 degree winter night. (I know, pics or didn’t happen but ya cold out there!)

Curious how many folks have had to get batteries replaced this early on a new-ish truck?

 

Mine has the greenish corrosion also and i will be bitching about at my next appointment around March. I have had it many times before on different vehicles but it it has never left my stranded while living in Wisconsin.

 

They sell 16K Tacomas a MONTH. It would take 160 battery failures a month just to get to one percent! Sure, I've read about four or five but not 160 or even better, 1,920 a year for a percent. For scale, right now there are around 22K of total THREADS in the 3rd gen section. That's about five weeks of sales for the Tacoma.

 

No not yet but my terminals are starting to corode and looks like the battery leaked leaked at some point.

 

Mine died at 16k. But I didn’t get it warrantied. Replaced with a deep cycle.

 

Just out of curiosity, do our Trucks lose all the Radio Presets and any other saved information once the battery is disconnected?

 

why no warranty even pro rated ?

 

My battery resting voltage is 12.2-12.4 - does that mean it needs to be replaced?

 

Which one did you replace it with?

 

Depends how long it’s disconnected. I’ve had mine disconnected for up to a couple of hours and my presets were still there, it just restarts the short term learning for things like shifting on the ATs

 

I agree it would take a a lot of failures to consider this a major problem however given it is winter no harm in alerting folks to take a look and spot signs of corrosion and test the terminals.

In my case about 1/3 of 3rd gen owners I know personally have had to get them replaced in less than 20k miles which led me to wonder if it is really that big of a deal - especially when mine is on its last leg

 

An odyssey. I think group 34? It’s the one helimedic recommended with his dual battery setup. I’m eventually going to get that so started with thit battery.

My stock one died pretty quick. Was on a camping trip and it barely started the last couple days. Then the following week I had to jump it every time I needed to start it.

 

I didn’t want another stock battery. Plus l, unless it’s a high dollar item, getting things warrantied is a pain in the ass. I’m sure they’d blame it on one of my electrical accessories anyway.

 

Mine developed a bad cell. I drove it to the dealer without an appointment and they had to jump it to get it out of their indoor service reception. They replaced it no charge, no hassle in the time it took me to go eat lunch. New battery is different than the stock one.

 

Thanks for the info, curiosity had me thinking about all the shit that is programmed into these trucks from the sunroof to the number of blinks of the turn signals.

 

I don't think current Optima Batteries are the same quality that the old ones were.

 

Yep, mine woke up dead one day. Wouldn't charge. 10 months old.

RZ Rob

 

Mine was leaking when off road so replaced it with an Optima yellow top. Why they put non-sealed batteries in off road vehicles is yet another Toyota mystery.

 

Nope. It's all on chips.

 

No outright failures to start, but it seemed weak on cranking a few times in warm weather. Thanks- will test thoroughly under load.