Changing battery soon

Same thing happened to me a couple weeks ago, got a new battery now all is good. 4 years is the bench mark and mine was past 4 years.

 

The manufacture date is on every battery. Look for a round sticker on the side. "C5" is march of 2025.
Joe

 

I take the tools to change the battery in there parking lot then give them the old one right then.

 

Personally I think many over recommend cheap batteries with good warranties and high accessibility, essentially buying the warranty over the battery. I couldn't disagree more. I don't want convenient warranties and replacement for likely product failure, I want the best product that won't fail. Odyssey/Northstar, also sold under Batteries Plus X2Power made in the USA batteries are some of the absolute best that money can buy. Yeah, it's going to cost more and not be for everyone, but also last substantially longer with higher performance than those cheap warranty disposable batteries. It's also comical that Odyssey/Northstar shelf life is longer than some of the cheap warranty batteries entire product life. Thread on Odyssey/Northstar AGMs:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/the-northstar-agm-battery-voltage-booster-upgrade.604478/

 

I've been running Walmart's everstart 24f agm for a few years with an off grid engineering battery strap and sdhq terminals. 4 year free replacement warranty and made in Japan. I replace them every 2 years in AZ anyway. Kind of goes against the post above, but they're under $200 and quality imo.

Northstar makes a very nice quality product, but they're around $400.

I keep a

$100 noco gb40 1000A ultrasafe car battery jump starter, 12V jump starter battery pack, battery booster, jump box, portable charger and jumper cables for 6.0L gasoline and 3.0L diesel engines

noco gb40 boost jumper in the truck just in case and top it off with a noco genius 10 charger whenever I remember.

 

Whatever u can find on sale … I went with a Duracell from batteries plus because of the warranty .

 

Yes my OTT tuner upped the voltage charge from the alternator for the correct charge to the AGM battery, went from approximately, 13.4 to 14.6 something like that.

 

Just picked up a new Costco interstate battery. Mine was from 2021 but was leaking from the caps and onto the pad. Any ideas how I could fix this in the future? Sure am AGM but how do I keep the leaking from happening?

 

You don't have to worry about that with AGM.

 

My original battery kept building up corrosion on the terminals.
Then i got a Costco battery, no more corrosion build up lasted 4 1/2 years.
never had any issues like leaking you describe.

 

The opinion of buying a battery that cost 75-100% more for non guaranteed 25% more longevity is a bad a argument from a math standpoint for most people.

 

One could simply hook up a battery tender set to AGM and fully charge it at their leisure. Again, nothing stated on TW is gospel. Its recommendations that those reading need to interpret and act according to their own use case and desires.

 

Yeah, nobody does the math anymore! And folks here can come up with some great reasons to justify spending stupid money. My personal favorite is "piece of mind".

 

battery longevity has far more to do with the environment it lives in then the product build quality when you're looking at the name brand batteries.

 

I'm glad that you took the time to chime in Crash. What are your thoughts about the "insufficient" charging voltage? I've heard that the Tuners can increase the voltage and that there is a resistor change that can do it. TIA

 

Is there a correlation between a battery tender and longevity if a vehicle is used daily?

 

The consensus found below was to top it off once a month. However, that depends on the type of battery tender used as they can only smart charge to their capability.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/the-northstar-agm-battery-voltage-booster-upgrade.604478/

 

Vehicle charging at the specified voltage listed right on the battery is the proper way to do it, which requires a +0.5v adjustment for AGM. Not charging at the specified voltage will lead to battery sulfation, causing reduced performance and life. You can run a AGM without voltage adjustment and it will work for a long time, however the premium spent on the AGM is not going to be realized in performance and life as the battery sulfates. I had Nothstar review my data in the linked thread and validate post adjustment charge values looked good for AGM.

The voltage adjustment is super easy to do in 2nd Gen and earlier with the alt-s fuse voltage booster. It reduces the charge value seen by the vehicle by -0.5v, causing the vehicle to increase voltage by +0.5v to compensate, giving a net +0.5v gain. Simple as changing a fuse. In vehicles without an alt-s fuse adjustment it must be done with a tune. OV-tune offered the voltage adjustment for 3rd Gen at one point. Unfortunately OV-tune is no longer on the forum. Other tuners may offer it. In OV-tune’s case the information and demand came from the battery voltage booster thread, and requests for the adjustment came from this forum, it seems like it won’t be commonly offered. Especially since boosting the voltage and running a lead acid battery will overcharge and damage the lead acid battery, something tuners likely want to avoid.

Best alternative for AGM use in vehicles without an alt-s circuit and don’t have a tune to adjust charge voltage is to periodically run a battery charger designed to charge AGMs. Though not as good as regular charging at spec’d voltage the periodic charging at higher voltage will breakup/prevent long term sulfation.

Again, this isn’t inexpensive or for everyone. But if you are looking for maximum battery performance, capacity, durability and life, this is the correct engineering solution.