http://www.uuhome.de/william.darden/
everything you need to know about batteries, click the link.
just had to buy a battery for my mom's car. Got it at B J, a wholesale membership place like sams, and they have a bunch of batteries in their tire section. If you look on the batteries, there should be a manufacture date, and a ship date. You want to get the battery with the latest manufacture date, which ensures it's been sitting around the least amount of time and has self discharged the least. They had batteries with SHIP dates of march 2006, don't remember the manuf. date, so it's been sitting 9 months! I even brought my multimeter with me to check voltages, and they were about 12.50 volts, which is pretty well discharged. Fortunately I was able to find one that was shipped jan '07, manuf. oct. 06 and was 12.58 volts thereabouts. A fully charged lead-acid battery should be > 12.6 volts. What happens when batteries sit, is they self discharge, and that's not bad unless you don't recharge them and let them sit in a discharged state. In this case, if you buy a battery like that and install it and your driving habits are short, the battery never comes close to a full recharge, it sulfates, becomes weak, and is garbage within 1-2 years or you only get 30 minutes of battery life with the car on accessory running the radio. So it's not really that the battery is bad, or it's the manufacturer's fault, it's the fault of the shipping delay and the reseller selling you a battery that's been sitting too long.
Like was said, the best thing to do is put a new battery on charge when you get it to ensure it gets back to 100% state of charge. Just because a battery is new does not mean it is at 100% state of charge! That's the dirty little secret the people selling batteries either don't know about or tell you about.
Don't ever buy a car battery if it doesn't have at least one or the other, a ship date or manuf. date sticker on it, otherwise the seller is screwing you trying to sell battery that's been sitting for who knows how long. Unless they're smart enough to maintain them on a maintenance charge, but I doubt they know what the voltage is for a 100% state of charge is to begin with.
yesterday, looked at a pontiac GTO on a dealer lot, LS2 motor 400 hp, was hoping to take it for test drive. Car wouldn't start, salesmen said since temperature dropped recently a lot of car wouldn't start because of dead batteries. I feel sorry for the people buying those cars because I guarantee those cars will need a new battery within 2 years when they should get 5 years out of them, and it's due to the cars sitting with the car alarm/radio/computer drawing a small current constantly and the battery never being recharged to anything near 100%.
everything you need to know about batteries, click the link.
just had to buy a battery for my mom's car. Got it at B J, a wholesale membership place like sams, and they have a bunch of batteries in their tire section. If you look on the batteries, there should be a manufacture date, and a ship date. You want to get the battery with the latest manufacture date, which ensures it's been sitting around the least amount of time and has self discharged the least. They had batteries with SHIP dates of march 2006, don't remember the manuf. date, so it's been sitting 9 months! I even brought my multimeter with me to check voltages, and they were about 12.50 volts, which is pretty well discharged. Fortunately I was able to find one that was shipped jan '07, manuf. oct. 06 and was 12.58 volts thereabouts. A fully charged lead-acid battery should be > 12.6 volts. What happens when batteries sit, is they self discharge, and that's not bad unless you don't recharge them and let them sit in a discharged state. In this case, if you buy a battery like that and install it and your driving habits are short, the battery never comes close to a full recharge, it sulfates, becomes weak, and is garbage within 1-2 years or you only get 30 minutes of battery life with the car on accessory running the radio. So it's not really that the battery is bad, or it's the manufacturer's fault, it's the fault of the shipping delay and the reseller selling you a battery that's been sitting too long.
Like was said, the best thing to do is put a new battery on charge when you get it to ensure it gets back to 100% state of charge. Just because a battery is new does not mean it is at 100% state of charge! That's the dirty little secret the people selling batteries either don't know about or tell you about.
Don't ever buy a car battery if it doesn't have at least one or the other, a ship date or manuf. date sticker on it, otherwise the seller is screwing you trying to sell battery that's been sitting for who knows how long. Unless they're smart enough to maintain them on a maintenance charge, but I doubt they know what the voltage is for a 100% state of charge is to begin with.
yesterday, looked at a pontiac GTO on a dealer lot, LS2 motor 400 hp, was hoping to take it for test drive. Car wouldn't start, salesmen said since temperature dropped recently a lot of car wouldn't start because of dead batteries. I feel sorry for the people buying those cars because I guarantee those cars will need a new battery within 2 years when they should get 5 years out of them, and it's due to the cars sitting with the car alarm/radio/computer drawing a small current constantly and the battery never being recharged to anything near 100%.