New battery

Not for me. I’d worry that I threw away $100. I don’t worry about a dead battery. It rarely happens to me and when it has, it’s been a minor inconvenience.

 

That said, I do have a story where a dead battery was more than a minor inconvenience. One spring I was putting my boat in the Mississippi after a long winter. I was alone, the current was high (3-5 fps), the wind was blowing 10ish mph, and the water was maybe 50-60F. I dumped it off the trailer and anchored it to the bank while I took the truck back to the parking lot.

I returned to the boat and it would not start. The battery had enough juice to turn it over, but not enough to clear out the winterizing oil and bring it back to life.

I put the trailer back in the river and proceeded to man handle a 18 foot fiberglass boat onto a trailer up to my stomach in 50F water with a spring upper Mississippi current and a wind fighting me.

Not fun!

Lesson learned: start the motor while the boat is on the trailer.

 

OEM Panasonic battery in my 2004 4Runner lasted 11 years, 180k miles, still kicking when I sold it in 2015.

 

Can you buy those Panasonic batteries? I don't even think the dealers sell them.

 

Not a catastrophe but really damned inconvenient. My time is important to me and I'd rather plan my battery changes in my lit garage with my tools on a free afternoon. Having a battery failure when I need to be at work or do something with the kids is unacceptable for me. I rely on a lot of batteries for work, so replacing them before they need replacing is a big deal.

 

How many times have you been in a hurry and realized you were low on gas?

 

Rarely. Why?

 

No, not available in the U.S. The original Panasonic came on a ship from Japan with the 4Runner.

 

Because it happens to me frequently and it takes longer to fill my tank than to jump my battery.

 

Heat kills batteries quicker than cold:

 

@gudujarlson I feel you with the boat thing. It's not too hard or expensive to add a switch and a second battery to a boat. If not a second battery, one of those mini jump packs can save the day too.

 

I made it 13 years with a diehard platinum AGM
I do always carry a charged jump pack regardless of the age of the battery

 

If you're comfortable with that, cool! I've had a battery failure last year that a jump box/jumper cables weren't able to get the vehicle going. It was a newish battery and the bike was always on a trickle charger in the garage and only taken on longer rides.

Sometimes components do fail unexpectedly, but I'm not one to roll the dice when things start nearing a certain age. Like you said, it isn't usually catastrophic when a battery fails, but it's very inconvenient and I'd rather spend the $200 preemptively now instead of miss out on something catastrophic at work or important with the family.

 

I had a Diehard last ten+ years, changed it out before it died I think I got my monies worth on it.

 

That's what I thought. I recall my 2017 sr5 and 2020 trd 4runners had those.

 

In my experience, the most common reason why jumping a vehicle fails is because of a bad connection. 12v systems are testy. You need to insure the connections are good. If you don’t see a spark, it’s not good. Keep trying. Drive that copper into the lead.

High quality and maintained jumper cables help as well.

CAVEAT: it’s safer to connect the negative to a ground that is not near the battery for fear of igniting hydrogen gas seeping from the battery. Paint is not a good conductor though, so it’s best to find bare metal, but bare metal is often rusty which also does not conduct well

 

2019 still original battery no issues but I do carry a jump box. Would never replace a battery until it failed growing up we had to deal with shitty batteries all the time. Would never think of wasting money on a new one until we inched every second out of a battery that we could. Also a car battery and a motorcycle battery are 2 different animals not really compatible IMO.

 

Crazy

 

most of the time you can tell when the battery starts acting jicky