So the jazz battery is holding less charge, this morning it was -3C and instead of the quick start up it took around 2 seconds, is this a sign that the battery is on its way out, it sounded like it was cranking slower too, will the battery recover when the weather warms up?
Batteries are obviously going to be a little slower in cold weather but in this case it sounds like they might also be nearing the end of their life. On my pickup the cold weather was what finally killed my batteries, but they were the originals on a 2002 vehicle so they were due to be replaced.
Before you decide to replace it, make sure you have enough water in the cells(only use distilled water if it's low). Make sure you have a good clean connection, clean the terminals if need be. Both can affect voltage output even if it's a good battery.
water in the cells? Its a sealed battery, batterys dont last that long with us either, we are on possibly the 5th and the car is an 07 plate.
what the hell are you doing to kill 5 in 9 years? Should hit minimum 5 years per battery. Cold weather does raise the ESR of a lead acid battery, reducing its output current abilities considerably.
batteries just die too much , had a cell failure on some random brand, before that i think the OEM one was old age, Halfords batteries are awful, a terminal fell off the battery!. (so that was a new one), one in there is a japanese battery and its about 1 or 2 year old now. In all honesty, what causes so many battery deaths, I remember that the renault espace had to have a replacement battery, i think it had 2 maybe 3 replacements in the 10 years of service (workhorse), that had one of them being the dodgy halfords unit. we had a Saab 9-3 Aero Automatic and the battery was fine, i think it was replaced maybe 2 times in the cars life (about 9 yrs). My grandad hasnt had a replacement battery yet in his Hyundai i20 from 2014, and my dad hasnt had a replacement battery in his 2012 Jag XF, maybe its just the cars my mum has owned
twice in 9 years is also really bad. Does your family just constantly deep cycle them or something??????
I hate dealing with car batteries. I've bought 5 in the last year, with the cheapest being $108. I've put two in the Blazer, with both only lasting about 4 months, I'm starting to think there is some kind of a constant parasitic draw I can't find somewhere. When I drug the Cummins out of the weeds It still had the Interstate Megatrons in it that had been in it since we bought it in 2005, and they were still able to turn it over, but not enough to start it, they didn't have maybe but 8 or 9 volts in either of them. I bought a pair of Exide's and those are still doing ok, but it's only been about 6 months. And, the tractor needed one too. Batteries are expensive. The battery in the silver Dodge was put in it about a year before I got it, It's an "Everstart" from Wal-Mart, and my aunt told me she inadvertently stole it, she only noticed it on the bottom of the cart after she left, And that battery has been in the truck for 6 years now, and hasn't given me a seconds trouble, starting the truck on the first crank even when it's -20*.
To answer the original question, a battery in cold weather will naturally have a lower voltage than a nice warm one... even if it is brand new. What it all boils down to is chemistry. The warmer the battery is, the quicker the chemical reactions can take place, and the more power that can be outputted at a given time. When the temperature would hit -20°F on my F-150, it would take as long as 2 minutes to crank over enough to build up the speed to start up. Now there were other reasons that this happened as well (oil as thick as molasses at that temperature comes to mind), but the longer you cranked, the more load was applied to the battery which warmed it up, this had the effect of accelerating the chemical reactions, and, over time, made enough of a difference to increase the voltage by as much as 4 volts. That's a pretty big difference. Age also does play into this factor quite a bit, but with the age of your battery... you should be having no problems what so ever... that is unless there is a problem somewhere else. That same truck I mentioned earlier once had an alternator regulator fail on me which started murdering batteries like it was its day job. It was overcharging them while it was running and they sure didn't like that at all. I went through 3 batteries in about a month before I found the problem.
I dont think we deep cycle them, we just use them as car batteries, if by deep cycle you mean using a lot of power then i guess since sometimes we listen to the radio in the car when the engine is off, but i dont think it does that much difference
That is the exact sort of thing a car battery isnt supposed to do actually. Lead acid suffers alot from memory effect. Using it for both large instantaneous draw and small trickle causes sulphation on the plates which in turn wrecks the battery.
So it's not a good idea to have the Radio on for extended periods of time. Does this mean that the stop start cars get through batteries quicker then?
Stop start cars aren't triggering memory and sulphate issues the same way cold cranking and then trickling a motor would. Though yes, yes they do burn batteries quicker. They also have modified electrical systems to cope with it but can only do so much. It's even in user manuals for most vehicles that leaving lighting and radios on for prolonged periods without engine running is deeply harmful to the battery.
oh ok, how long is prolonged? i know it varies between vehicles but say for a 1.3 japanese hatchback how long can it be on for, maybe 15 mins? 30mins? 1hour?
30 minutes max I'd say then run the car for 10 minutes, or even better but not economical, just idle.
Even a cheap consumer car predicted stereo can be 25 to 40 watts per channel. 4 channels. 100-160W. Assuming full volume and not accounting for inefficiency. That's 50Wh knocked off of the life of the battery, this is fine on paper as the battery is about 750Wh of capacity. Except that means you're now starting the car from 700Wh of juice. Car batteries are optimised for cold crank and peak current draw from full charge so tend to have colossal voltage drop off. Starting the car after having depleted battery means you're now starting the car from a part charged battery and where the car might have caused the battery to jump from 750Wh to 500Wh, your now drawing it down to 450. Car batteries aren't designed for this, the lower you drain them the more you knock their life span short. Even listening to the radio for 30 minutes you're dropping the battery charge and then causing the stater motor to drop the cars battery level below what it's designed to put out. They are cold crank batteries not deep cyclers. You draw the voltage too low and their plates will suffer sulphur build up crippling the battery. It's not a question of how long is it safe. It's a question of when will you stop doing it as it's probably why you're destroying batteries so fast. It's also why if you're into boats or caravans, you have 2 batteries, a cold cranker and a deep cycler. Your phone is a deep cycler not a cold cranker. --- Post updated --- Stop start cars looking around, a) have more efficient starters, B) larger capacity batteries than an engine of that size would suggest, C) more advanced batteries, D) capacitor banks presumably to limit the harm the battery can come to and likely chew through their batteries anyway
oh ok, makes sense why there are deep cycle batteries, thanks and long live the current battery we have
