A little battery talk

My brother in law lives in Phoenix,Arizona and he's told me the same thing about batteries only lasting a couple years before the go bad on average. He had a 03 4runner with 150k miles (that he just sold for peanuts without telling me just like the low milage 95 xtra cab V6 5sp he also sold for peanuts without telling me! But that's a different subject lol)

I'm in Bakersfield,California and it's hot. Not as hot as Arizona but just about the same most of the time. For many years I would buy a car and trade it in after a couple years so I didn't have to buy tires or batteries for a long time so I don't have much experience with buying batteries.

 

Might be both I can have 10 starts and stops with a total mileage at the most 20 miles this can go 5 or 6 days a week

Not that the batteries fail just when I replace them since 1999

Then I am good for forgetting batteries in vehicles as I have 4 street legal and at least another 10 next thing I know spring is here one or 2 frozen

 

I feel you man. I have 3 cars and zero commute, so some of them might not run for days - every grocery trip starts with the question: which car we take? Not for convenience, but which one was sitting longest.

 

Everybody and their brother sells automotive batteries with their own name on it but the reality is there are only a handful of lead acid automotive battery manufacturers.

*Johnson Controls is one of the largest in the U.S.A. and they also have a huge battery recycling center in South Carolina. That source of recycled lead insulates them a little bit from fluctuations in the price of raw lead.

*East Penn, (formerly Douglas, formerly Deka)

*Yuasa, based in Japan but has world wide distribution.

There are some others but if it is sold in the U.S.A. it is more than likely a Johnson Controls battery or an East Penn battery regardless of who's brand is on it.

Because the manufacturers are more than happy to produce those batteries to the specifications of the retailer, there are different grades of batteries. So you can get a top end Johnson Controls made battery or you can get a rock bottom grade Johnson Controls battery. Same holds true for East Penn and the others. Being made by one of the major manufactures verse another manufacturer, doesn't automatically equate to one being better than the other.

In order to compare apples to apples you have to look at the specifications and ratings. Everyone selling batteries likes to brag about their CCA rating but very few will want to show you the reserve capacity rating. In order to make valid comparisons you have to know what you are comparing. A Group 27 battery will often have a better reserve capacity than a group 21 but the group 27 is substantially larger than the group 21.
Some cheap batteries can have impressive looking CCA ratings, but they generally sacrifice durability and reserve capacity to achieve those numbers. There's no free lunch, in order to hit a price point you either have to cut corners somewhere or you have to raise that price.

 

Just a suggestion: Battery Tender

OR

Solar charger with a regulator.

 

I have never heard of a solar charger

I have a few battery tenders but the 150' extension cords always seem to fail or come unplugged Evil Varmints chew through cords

Besides to me batteries are cheap

When you leave for and come home in the dark first thing I want is to get my boots off and be in the shower

 

A solar charger is nothing more than a small solar panel that trickle charges the battery OR a solar panel with a charge controller. You can put it on the dashboard to keep the battery charged on vehicles you seldom drive.

 

I run a Odyssey 16volt battery in my Drag race car !!

 

I have a batteryminder charger/maintainer with a 25 ft cord. 2/4/8 amps and its brought a few batteries back from dead for friends and a optima I had.
I put fused connections on my batteries so its just a simple plug to connect the batteries and I try to connect each battery once every couple weeks for a day or two.
It was like $130 and I've had it since 2012

 

A battery tender (automatic, self regulating trickle charger) is a great device for batteries that sit idle for long periods of time. They aren't made to charge batteries (the output is far too low) but they do an excellent job of maintaining batteries.

There are a few different approaches to setting up a battery tender.
One method is to use extension cords and alligator clips. I reject that method because it is clumsy and time consuming to hook up every time you need to set it up. I agree with Wyoming09 that the last thing I want to do at the end of the day is play around with something like that.

Another method is to install an on-board unit that is permanently connected to the battery and only requires a 120 volt AC shore line. I did that for a truck that also had a block heater and that's easy set up to live with. Plus, because the power cord is universal (any extension cord will do) it doesn't require a "home base".

A third method is to wire a female socket to the battery so that a battery tender can be quickly connected and disconnected from the vehicle. The advantage of this set up is that a single battery tender can be shared between several different vehicles. The disadvantage is that only one vehicle can be connected at a time and it is location specific. However, it works very well in garages, carports, barns, etc. where a particular vehicle may remain for an extended period of time.

I use the BMW style plug and sockets because they are easy to assemble, universal and easy to use.



I prefer to use a socket rather than a loose pigtail dangling from the vehicle. It's a cleaner installation. It also gives you a 12V receptacle on the vehicle that can be used for other applications.

If you don't have a power source where the vehicle will be stored, a solar panel is an option. A small solar panel can act as a trickle charger and because the output is very low and only occurs during daylight, it will not over charge the battery. I knew a guy that left an old VW bug parked at an airport for 30+ days at a time. He had a small solar panel in the back package shelf wired to the battery with a diode in line and that would keep the battery charged. A larger solar panel with a charge controller is a bit safer (can't overcharge) but costs more and is a bit larger.

 

It is not so much having the goodies to protect the batteries in my case it is a matter of getting distracted and forgetting all about those things.

Not going to say a word about snow plows that show up when the first Snow fall is predicted funny how they get broken in the summer

I forgot where I put a clutch kit on a chair in the kitchen for 3 years

Pulled the starter to rebuild the solenoid might be 5 years ago

It is like lift the hood Not again !!

 

Officially it's dead. D-E-D, dead. Hardly cranks the engine, if it does not start right away, the starter goes into "clicking mode". I tried to charge it, and it does not take it - voltage goes up to 14.8 within a minutes (this is where the charger goes into trickle-mode). So my beloved SuperStart Premium lasted only 7 years and 2 months.

Now the fun part starts. What battery should I get in that part of the world? Most of cars here have battery that are 6-7/8" tall, and batteries for "Asian cars" (it's not a joke, this is how they call it here) are quite limited (without special order that comes with weeks of delivery time and paying arm and legs). Found these options locally:

Same CCA what I have now (when it was new):
Bosch S4024 60 Ah 540 A (600 CCA) - $80
Arctica 70 Ah 550 A (610 CCA) - $84
VARTA Blue Dynamic D47 60 Ah 540 A (600 CCA) - $87
Centra Plus CB704 70 Ah 540 (600 CCA) - $89
Fiamm Titanium 60 Ah 540 A (600 CCA) - $90
VARTA Black Power 70 Ah 550 A (610 CCA) - $90
Centra Futura CA654 65 Ah 580A (640 CCA) - $105

All these batteries are a bit shorter (left-right size) than the existing battery. My battery is 10-1/4" all these batteries above are 9" wide.

Bigger capacity but the size similar to my existing battery are:
VARTA Blue Dynamic E23 70 Ah 630 A (690 CCA) - $90
Bosch S4026 70 Ah 630 A (690 CCA) - $95
Centra Futura CA754 75 Ah 630A (690 CCA) - $100
Banner Running Bull EFB 57011 70 Ah 680A (750 CCA) - $141

Centra Futura CA754 loks like the biggest bangs for bucks, and comes with 3 years replacement warranty (it is full replacement warranty for brand new products, not pro-rated one), However I read that they love to fail few months after warranty expires.

The other is Banner Running BULL. Is the most expensive, but this is solid brand - they run at least 6 years easy. Actually series Running Bull is designed for "stop and start" cars (engine shuts of itself and starts when is needed) so I really need "Power bull series": Power Bull P7029 70Ah 600A (660 CCA) - $114, but I will have to order it.

Unfortunately other well known brands like Bosh, Varta or Fiamm are not as good as the brand name would suggest. They are on the same quality level as Centra (life span is 2-3 years).

 

perhaps your battery just has acid stratification? That can be what happens if it doesn't have cranking power, but charges quickly. I'm not sure what fixes this, but I have read that possibly shaking it can help distribute the acid properly again. I would check the water in the cells and make sure they are all near the top of the holes. You don't want plates to be exposed. My walmart Everstart is going on 5 years old, and I checked recently and had to add about an ounce of distilled water to a couple of the cells. One was very low and the plate was almost exposed to air. I would notice groggy starting sometimes. That seems to have gone away now that I topped off the battery.

Here's a good article:
https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/water_loss_acid_stratification_and_surface_charge

 

Thanks for the tip. I will check it. I never opened that battery. I guess something must be under these lids with whole bunch of warning signs.

 

Consider yourself lucky you have one like that and not an AGM/sealed or gel battery haha

 

Nope, it is dead. No tricks. Tested at the store the battery had 12.4 V unloaded, 5.4V loaded. That is just after charging.

I found even better deal than "Power Bull P7029". The same physical size is "Power Bull P8009" - has 80Ah 640A (703 CCA) for $108 from official Banner's local store. So this is higher performance than my original battery (100 CCA more) but answering not asked question, no the starter does not crank faster

 

did you check the water? Curious to see how low it was. Just takes a flathead to pry open the covers.

 

No, I did not want to damage that plastic - it did not want to let it go and looked quite brittle (from the age?). That battery was going back as a core ($10 worth), and I did not know how they would react dissected unit.

I'm sure the water was not that low (judging from the sound when I tilted it). The tilting or shaking did not make any difference on charging characteristics. Also judging from the voltage none of plates broke - I guess that battery just approached the end of its life. I was surprised it lasted that long (at least 1 year longer than expected). Now saying that my 2012 4Runner still runs on factory battery. I feel it is going to give up this year. I may just replace it before the summer vacation trip.

 

Those plastic covers are pretty thick and robust. It doesn't take much to pry them off. Just for the future.