Well back to car batteries. After the car sitting outside for ten days in temps ranging from double digit below zero to 20 above. The car fired right up with my 6 year silver Delco battery. I’ll take that.
@MikeInNH: Most people don’t visit Cartalk’s forums either, taken as a whole…
Here in the North…batteries are being tested a lot. This has been a very cold and snowy winter.
Its been bad over a lot of the nation,I for one are ready for sunny warm times(at least average) the battery in my dodge is starting to show signs of weakening(8 yrs old) but the heavy duty altenator and battery with the towing package has really paid off over all,bring the warm weather on!-Kevin
I worked at a battery company west of Chicago in the late 1970’s and the truth is we made Motorola, Interstate, VW, Diehard etc. among many off brands. Truth is they are identical inside but the better ones have different number of lead plates per cavity (look up a cutaway view of a battery) . Amps are true measure of a battery, more lead = longer lasting. Don’t know if they’ve changed much inside.
@JustPlainMike I stated previously I choose a battery based on cca (based on plates as you have described. But if I lived in an extremely hot climate I might consider less cca because heat is such a battery killer!
Why would you want LESS CCA in a hot climate? Is it simply not needed and you will be paying for more than required or does more CCA actually shorten the life somehow if most of its life is spend in a place like Miami or Phoenix? Or will the battery just die at about the same time because of the heat and nothing be gained from a higher CCA?
It sounds like batteries are one of those things where heavier would be better if more lead usually equates to a better battery. So, if you have a bunch of different batteries of different brands/grades but the same group size, it would probably be best to pick the heaviest one if no other information or ratings were available.
The thing I find annoying is that there has been no time better than now for being able to produce the best quality goods with better purity and more exacting precision tolerances but this know how has been used to figure out how to make something as cheaply to be able to just get by. There are so many people who don’t know that a battery or a Goodyear tire from Wal-Mart are not the same as the ones bought elsewhere.