Doing a oil change on my old b.a. xr6 ford ute the other day,
thought I would clean up & lube the battery terminals,
looked at the battery & thought, I don,t remember replacing this battery, turns out it,s been 10 years in the car,
FWIW its a Century brand
Joda.
Hi all; With 3 cars in our house hold and the winter in tassie can be a problem at the best of times. I use a small 5 Amp battery charger that us as old as me to top up the batteries in the cars during the winter months, this works for me and as our cars do not get a lot of use these day, what with the price of petrol and diesel going through the roof.
My wife's 1997 Subaru wagon has just had its original battery replaced. It was a Century and lasted 25 years - must be some sort of record. I think that what contributed to its longevity was, despite being used a LOT, the car had the chance to fully recharge the battery after each start. It never got to sit around partially charged and was always topped up with demineralised water. To the best of my recollection, it never had a charger connected to it until its last gasp.
Needless to say it was replaced with another Century...
My land rover, however, gets connected to the charger weekly as it gets used for a lot of short trips and the battery doesn't get much of a chance to get fully charger.
i maybe miss informed but a battery that is dying may put extra strain on the starter and alternator if this is correct it may be cheaper to replace the battery than wait till the others suffer failure and have to replace 2 or 3 items
The later Falcons only got 2- 21/2 years out of a battery in our fleet, would give up without any warning most times. RAA got called out quite a few times over the years we ran them, was the only real fault I could pick with them as a fleet vehicle.
I lived in Norway for 9 winters and had a car which I couldn't install an engine block heater in.
But using some plastic insulation sheet around the battery and a 5 watt lightbulb kept the battery nice and warm so I had full battery output.
