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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Topic: Should I replace my car battery pre-emptively?
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Scott Norwood
Film God
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 09-13-2017 05:47 PM
quote: Rick Raskin
You could use a clip on current meter (we called them sniffers) to help locate a fault. With everything turned off see if there is a current drain. A few milliamps would be normal to keep electronics powered up but amps of drain could indicate a problem.
Agreed with this--I know very little about cars, but I do know that this is the way to troubleshoot battery drain problems. You can go through and pull each fuse and see if doing so changes the current draw. Eventually, you will figure out which circuit is draining the battery. (As a bonus, you will learn how to re-set the clock and radio presets!)
I don't own a car at the moment, but, when I did, I generally took it to a mechanic in the late fall to have snow tires put on and to have him do a quick mechanical check-over to ensure that it was ready for the winter. I always asked him to check the battery and, occasionally, he would find that it was about to fail (in which case I would replace it). My logic in doing this is that I know that regular batteries tend to fail when cold, so I assume that car batteries do, too. As car parts go, batteries are fairly inexpensive, so it seemed like good insurance to me to replace one that is expected to fail soon. I did keep jumper cables in the trunk and had (and still have) an AAA membership, too. I think that I have only ever used jumper cables to help start someone else's car. I don't remember ever having a battery completely die on me.
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 09-14-2017 07:54 AM
On the battery is going to fail thing...
When having tires changed (and they did a real good job on that, including polishing and getting corrosion off the rims that were allowing the old tires to leak a little), they noted that the battery should be changed. It wasn't that the machine said that failure was imminent but that its CCA had fallen below the desired range.
I opted to "let it ride" since the battery was not near its 5-year mark (Interstate battery, for those interested). FFW to this year where I had an exhaust manifold issue and had it in the shop to address that and I asked them to check the battery to see if it was time to change (I wanted to see if it had degraded and how fast it was going down). Nope, no problem with the battery at that shop (and they sell batteries).
So was the tire shop just trying to get more money since it was fall time and one of the reasons I was changing the tires is I HATED, HATED, HATED, the Goodrich tires that were on the car (Subaru with AWD with ABS and I was scared to drive it in bad weather it would slip and slide so much; seriously, my Corvette tracked better in the snow than this did, but I digress and the new tires rectified the problem), or is the threshold in which a shop will say a battery has lost enough CCA to warrant replacement?
I suspect that depending on what machine you are using to analyze the battery you are going to get different results and in combination with that, what a shop determines is good-enough sets when you are told to change the battery.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 09-14-2017 08:52 AM
So I bought one of these, and it measured the CCA as being well within spec on my two-year/72K mile old battery: should be 330, measured 341. I'm going to try again on Sunday, when the car will have spent 24 hours without being driven (barring an emergency callout somewhere).
Haven't had a chance to put the fault code reader on my wife's car yet. My gut feeling is that I'd be a bit surprised if there's a rogue current drain anywhere, but rather that her usage pattern (all very short drives from a cold or nearly cold start, with the a/c, radio, phone charging and sometimes the headlights all on), plus leaving the alarm armed overnight, is what's killing the batteries. At some point I'll jerry rig some long extension leads for my multimeter probes to position the meter itself out of the car with the hood closed, so that I can see what the current drain is with the alarm armed and disarmed. I'd be surprised if all those sensors aren't drinking quite a bit of juice. The long term solution is probably to disconnect and externally charge her battery up every month or so, which I'll try to remember to do.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 05-03-2018 09:44 PM
Cinemacon killed my battery!
The car sat for four days in the hotel parking garage in Las Vegas, and when I came to start it for the journey home, I noticed that the starter motor sounded slow and hesitant, and needed to turn over three or four times before the engine caught. Usually, it does so on the first turn. I put this down to four days of sitting idle, with alarm sensors, etc., drawing current, and thought that the 230-mile drive home would charge it again, and all would be OK.
About five hours after getting home, I tried to start it again: it turned over once, then nothing. Then I put the meter on it and got the result above. So I jump started it, drove to Autozone, was relieved of $130, and am back on the road.
That one lasted two years and nine months. A bit surprised that it died so quickly, especially given that I do 35,000 miles a year of mainly freeway long-haul. But that is consistent with my wife's experience of Honda batteries, and the reason why I did not buy the replacement from the Honda dealership.
The alternator is putting out a steady 14.2 to 14.4 when the engine is running, so I don't think it's cooking batteries.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 05-04-2018 12:03 PM
As a guy who sells a few hundred batteries a year (Carquest brand, made by Johnson Controls, same company that makes Interstate batteries), I can tell you the battery experience is all over the map. Sometimes they last 2 years...sometimes 10 years. There are just too many variables, and sometimes two batteries in the exact same conditions will last wildly different times. You just never know. It's weird.
One thing I've noticed with today's batteries in cars -- when they decide they're done, they are DONE. I remember a number of years ago I drove to work in my Ford Ranger and everything seemed fine, but that night when I went to go home, the truck wouldn't even crank at all....NOTHING. That battery was 6 years old. I guess it had a heart attack or something.
We're currently in lawn-mower-battery season, otherwise known as "well yeah, it sat outside all winter but it should still be under warranty...right?" season.
quote: Mike Blakesley
A modern car should easily be able to sit for a month or more without being started with no ill effects. We have a 2013 Escape that has occasionally sat for up to 10 days and never a problem, although we DID replace the battery in it early this summer.
My wife had knee replacement surgery last fall, and her car (the Escape mentioned above) sat in the garage for 5 weeks while she was in the hospital and recovering. I purposely didn't start it up the whole time, just as an experiment. At the end of the seige, it fired right up with no problem.
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