One reason the new car batteries last so long is that all the cables, starters and ground connection are also new.
As long as we are bashing Walmart, I bought a set of Goodyear tires there that only lasted to 22000 miles even though rotated every 5000. I found out later they were made in China and sold only at Walmart even though the model name was very similar to a US made tire sold at Goodyear stores.
Back in the good old days when some cars had ammeter gauges, if the gauge read a high charge for a longer period time than usual after a normal start of the engine, I suspected that the battery might be nearing the end of its useful life. However, the latest model car I owned with an ammeter was my 1954 Buick. I wish manufacturers would bring back the ammeter gauge and while they are at it, they could throw in an oil pressure gauge.
The last car that was stock that I owned with an ammeter was the 1980 New Yorker I had. It was an old-school gauge with a âDâ and âCâ and the needle sat in the center or slightly towards âCâ when things were normal. I had a Ford LTD âPolice Packageâ that had oil, amp, and water gauges installed aftermarket in the center of the dashâthe stock vehicle just had idiot lights for everything.
@Triedaq: My current car doesnât have an oil pressure gauge per se, but a couple of presses of the buttons on the steering wheel will bring up a digital oil pressure and oil temp readout, plus all sorts of other useful things. By far the worst was Fordâs fake oil pressure gaugeâa gauge wired to an on-off sensor for an idiot light. Either it read great or zero. Whoever engineered that should have been ashamed of themselves.
We stock AC Delco professional blue label batteries at work
They are absolute crap
They are not the ones that come in the trucks new
The ones that come in vehicle new are AC Delco with a gray label . . . they are pretty decent
@db4690, "We stock AC Delco professional blue label batteries at work
They are absolute crap"
Can you elaborate?
Yep, tires are another great example of special models made just for Wal-Mart. The model numbers are so similar it is hard to tell them apart. Look up Snapper Mower Wal-Mart online and fid the article about the CEO that said no to Wal-Mart. I would have posted the link but links seem to be filtered out. Wal-Mart basically wanted them to sell a throwaway model there and good models elsewhere. They said no. Unfortunately they are now being sold at WM after the company was bought out by someone else.
We stock the AC Delco professional blue label 7yr batteries at work . . . we have a small warehouse
The factory AC Delco gray label batteries consistently seem to last 7yrs before failing
These âprofessionalâ blue label batteries seem to last 5 years tops. Some of them donât make it to 3 years
Iâve never seen so many leaking batteries. They seem to leak at the seams, but the battery isnât bulging
Iâve also never seen so many batteries that just drop dead, with no symptoms or apparent causes
You have a truck with no measured draw, nothing was left on, normal mixed driving, moderate weather, driven regularly (not sitting around), the charging system is working correcty, the belt is in good shape, etc. The battery is say 2 years old and tests good
Yet, out of the blue, the thing takes a crap
Dead duck
Electrolyte level is fine
If you charge it, it wonât hold worth squat
Let me clarify . . . not every single blue label battery does this. But the percentage of crap batteries is high enough, that it makes me think the âprofessionalâ label was somebodyâs idea of a joke
I wouldnât buy one for my car
Hmm. I have Delco batteries in all my cars, my wifeâs car is on year 7 of a 6 year battery. I also sell them and see very few returns under warranty for my regular customers. I stock the Advantage series and the Professional series. The Advantage are âoffshoreâ batteries and I donât sell many of them but frankly the ones that I do sell seem to hold up just fine for over 5 years. And the Professional series have proven to me to have less warranty returns than the Interstates I sold alongside the Delcos and far better than Exide. I got rid of Interstate long ago.
Honestly my only complaint about Delco batteries is that they seem to be returning to accessible caps on their batteries. That was one reason I stopped stocking Interstate. Those caps are just one more avenue for leakage and corrosion.
Thanks @asemaster Glad to hear another opinion. I really have had no problem. The other thing is that if you need a vented one for under the back seat, your options are limited and sure wonât find one at Walmart.
Iâm glad to hear youâve had better results with the delco professional batteries than we have
By the way, in our case, itâs not the caps that are leaking acid . . . itâs the case itself
Sometimes, I have a suspicion that our shop gets the âsecond choiceâ batteries, if thatâs even possible . . .
Interestingly I got a GM flyer today that lists three different Delco batteries. Professional red for $99 with 18 month free replacement, Professional silver for $129 with 30 months, and Professional Gold for $144 for 42 months. Talk about confusing labeling but it appears that the silver would be better than the red.
Maybe itâs everything with a blue label thatâs crap⊠Weâve had a lot of hard drive failures with Western Digital âblue labelâ drives at work.
I had to get a new battery for my Mazda a few weeks ago and went with the Auto Zone store brand, Duralast, with the highest CCA I could get; well, the 2nd highest. The highest CCA(platinum) was like $40 more than the Gold and offered only 40 more CCA(640 vs 680) AND I would have had to special order it and wait for it to come in. The âregularâ one was about that much less than the Gold, but had only 575 CCA, so the Gold seemed the best for the money.
I had one guy telling me that it wouldnât take that long for me to change the battery out by myself, just needed a 10mm socket wrench. I told him I wasnât about to stand in ankle deep snow in 20+ air temps with near or below 0 wind chill trying to do something Iâve never done before. AZ put it in for me.
@Bing, the Advantage, Red, Silver, and Gold batteries are just the new names for the batteries since they no longer have pro-rata warranties. As far as I know, no battery comes with a pro-rate warranty anymore. They say itâs rated for 6 years of service, but itâs not warrantied for that long. Instead, they replace it for free if it fails within 30 months.
Advantage is an âoffshoreâ battery rated for 60 months, 18 free replacement. For the price theyâre a good deal.
Red is the old 5 year battery. Silver is the 6, Gold is the 7.
Apparently Iâm not making enough money on batteries. For most standard sizes, my prices are about $20 less than your flyer. But that doesnât include installation.
I think the Everstart Gold that started this conversation has a 3 year free replacement and is pro-rated out to 5 years for the remaining two years. I know that some of the âvalueâ line batteries have completely done away with the pro-rate. I think the Everstart one has a one year replacement and no pro-rate although it is rated for 3 years.
I have never seen more issues with the Western Digital blue label drives than any others. I think one of the problems, especially with some laptops, is that the hard drive gets basically no cooling so it always runs hot and fails before it normally would. Buy a solid state drive if you have the money and want it to last.
Thanks. Makes me feel better thinking I got a good battery. I donât mind paying but I donât want to worry about it when its ten below. The flyer did say âor lessâ and $24 installation. I think I paid a little over $100 with trade in at Car Quest a year ago.
@cwatkin: Actually Google runs their data centers hotter than normal because theyâve found that drives last longer when they run them hot. Seems counter intuitive, but Google has run a lot of drives and ought to know. I think we just got a bad batch of drivesâmost of the failed ones were manufactured in February to August of 2011. For reliability of a laptop drive, weâve seen Toshiba, Hitachi, and Samsung drives last the longest. (Samsung drives are now Seagate though)
There seems to be a certain âsweet spotâ as for temps of computer hard drives. Several others have told me this. I think the platters and all expand and are designed to be operated at a certain temp. It is kinda like having a car where the thermostat is stuck open or has been removed. Sure, it runs cooler, but this isnât good for the engine, emissions, fuel economy, or anything else. The engine is meant to be hot but not too hot. The same is true for a hard drive. If you run it too hot, it will not last long at all.
Also, as for the bad hard drives. I donât know if these came in the same shipment or not but hard drives are subject to being banged around, dropped, or otherwise exposed to mechanical shock. I once had a shipment of Western Digital hard drives a while back and all of them failed within a month. No one else was complaining about lower than average reliability so I got them replaced and the new ones never had an issue. I figure my shipment was dropped or somehow abused in transit.
There seems to be a certain "sweet spot" as for temps of computer hard drives. Several others have told me this
Never heard of it. Been working as an engineer and now engineering manager for over 40 years. Hard drives do not like to get hot. Sweet spot is more like a sweet range. Somewhere between 40 and 80 degrees.
I don't know if these came in the same shipment or not but hard drives are subject to being banged around, dropped, or otherwise exposed to mechanical shock.
Mechanical shock can be a problemâŠbut usually when in use. Not when in their sleep state. The heads are usually tucked away. AlsoâŠif they were dropped hard enough to cause a problemâŠI seriously doubt theyâd be working at all. Hard drives are prone to failures. In fact ANY mechanical device is. At our company any time we do a yearly service maintenance call on our customersâŠif they still have hard drives we automatically upgrade to SSDâs. Itâs cheaper for us in the long run. The SSDâs have so fewer problems it actually has been saving us money in the long run.