My factory battery is at 50% capacity after 5 years. No cranking issues but mechanic suggested replacing.
If I buy a $60/installed battery at Walmart is there a large difference in quality vs another place $100 installed? I am leery about Walmart.
I know nothing about battery’s but lots of minutia about cars otherwise.
It depends on the battery you choose… Cranking power, warranty…etc.
You might get a quality battery cheaper at Walmart than somewhere else.
It’s not where you buy the battery that matters. It’s the battery you buy that matters.
When buying a battery you want look at two things. Cold Cranking Amps(CCA)and Reserve Capacity.
Cold cranking amps is a rating of a battery that determines how many amps are delivered to the starter at 0? for 30 seconds continuous. So if you live where it gets cold you want a battery with a high CCA rating.
Reserve capacity of a battery is a rating of a battery that determines how long the battery can keep the electricals of the vehicle operating in the event the charging system should fail. And this is indicated in minutes on the battery. So a battery with a reserve capacity of 90 will keep the electricals operating for an hour and a half.
Tester
Different people are going to have different opinions. I will say large numbers of cars use Wal-mart batteries. If you can find Consumer’s Report magazines, for example in a library, not long ago they did an article on car batteries.
The Yellow batteries are allegedly a grade up from the black, though perhaps they are only at Sam’s club.
You haven’t told us what kind of car you have. Aren’t there some cars which have problems when you replace the batteries, security code problems?
Look for a Deka or Johnson Controls battery. Interstate is a JC battery. I would stay away from Exide products.
Assuming it’s the right size, I’d have no problem using a Walmart battery, one’s in my car, works great. And 5 years is plenty.
Most WalMart stores have a high turnover of batteries, so you have a good chance of getting a battery that is fresh. I have had very good luck with WalMart batteries. I had one WalMart battery that died while on warranty and the battery was replaced with no questions.
I would not by ANY battery until I HAD to…But that’s just me…
“My factory battery is at 50% capacity after 5 years. No cranking issues but mechanic suggested replacing.”
Drive on…
Tester is correct about the CCA, etc. and there is nothing wrong with WM batteries. I’ve been using them pretty much for 20 years on a number of vehicles and never had much of a problem with them at all.
While I don’t know who produces WM batteries, most battery companies manufacture batteries for a number of suppliers and the only difference is the name tag stuck to it.
And try to get a battery with as late a production date as possible. They’re marked 1/10 which denotes a Jan. 2010 manufacture as an example.
We’ve got a local farm supply store here and one day while I was in there for some tires got to looking at batteries and about 10% of their batteries had production dates that were 10-12 months old. Not good.
Yeah, if a getting a jump is no big deal, they could wait. But what does ‘battery’s at 50%’ mean, anyway? It either works, or it doesn’t, right?
A battery is rated by it’s CCA. This can be tested. A battery with 750 CCA at 30 deg Celsius would be at half capacity if it can only provide 375 CCA at 30 Deg Celsius. Under a lot of conditions with today’s small engines, this may be sufficient to start the car. But with a battery this degraded, loss of CCA begins to happen quickly. 50% today, and 40% next week.