Have you ever bought a new battery and after a year it needs to be replaced? Well, it can happen and although certain batteries last longer than others, being able to test and perform maintenance on your battery and prolong the life of it. The average battery should last you between 3-4 years depending on how much you drive. But, if you properly maintain your battery it can last well over 5 years.
Symptoms of a bad battery and how to test it:
Before performing any maintenance on your car battery, you want to make sure your battery is good. Common symptoms of a weak battery will be a slow start, power life gate not opening and an engine light with low voltage codes for different modules. You’ll also notice flicking headlights or dim interior lights. If you haven’t changed your car battery in 4-5 years, it would be good common practice to go ahead and do so if you have the spare cash. As far as testing the battery, there are a few things you can use that are very simple. What I would suggest is a simple load tester, they are very simple to use and here are a few options from amazon that work well:
What you are looking for is the voltage that the battery is putting out. Most 12 volt batteries have 6 cells in them and fully charged those cells are 2.11 volts each. So, a brand new battery should read close to 12.66 volts (hence being a 12v battery). Anything upwards of 12volts is good and anything below means the battery may be on its way out. The other thing you want to look at is the cold cranking amps or CCA. Each battery is different and usually will list the CCA rating on the top of the battery. In the battery world, cold cranking amps are used to measure how engines are started in cold weather. You will usually see people in colder climates have higher CCA batteries, otherwise they would have trouble getting their engines to start on super cold days. For example, we just had a record low cold front come in (South Carolina) and my brother in law’s Dodge Ram wouldn’t start at all because the battery was already weak. My 2010 mustang had a slow start even with a new battery. So, you definitely want to have a higher CCA rated battery in colder weather. Now, the cold cranking amps will decrease overtime as the battery loses its juice, and that is the second thing you are checking for.
Battery Corrosion and How to Clean it:
Have you ever seen corrosion on a battery? As a technician, I see cars come in all the time with battery terminals that are covered in corrosion. Sometimes, I’ll even see the corrosion grow on the battery hold downs and it will literally eat them away. Vapors and gas naturally are released from the battery and can form corrosion mainly around the terminals or metal surfaces. If corrosion keeps building, it will prematurely kill the battery before its lifespan is up and can also damage wiring and possibly your A/C system.
Luckily, it’s not too hard to clean corrosion from the battery. What you will need is some battery cleaner, battery corrosion preventative spray and tools to clean the terminals and posts. Here are some useful products on amazon that will be perfect for battery maintenance:
First thing to do is take the battery cleaner (it’s a foam spray) and spray it around the corrosion and let it sit for a little bit. You can rinse if with water. If your battery hold down is the hook style and has corrosion on the metal parts you can take that off and spray it with battery cleaner. Repeat the process if there is a bunch of corrosion. Once the corrosion is gone, you can take the tool for the terminal and posts and clean them, make sure to clean the outside of the terminals as well. Install the anti-corrosion washers around the posts and reinstall the terminals. Once you have reinstalled the terminals, spray the terminals with battery terminal protector.
Another thing to remember is when you take the battery terminals off, you always want to take the negative battery terminal off first, and put it back on last. So, it would be negative / positive to take off and positive / negative to put back on. The reason this is important is because if you take the positive terminal off first you could possibly create an electrical short. Thanks for reading, if you have any questions you can email me under the Contact Us page.
