@jtsanders
what if the car doesn’t start, and there’s no close auto parts store, and the neighborhood is full of unsavory characters?
I’m sure this scenario occurs all the time, but I’d rather not be one it happens to
That, in my opinion, is what we want to avoid
Therefore, it’s best to be proactive as far as battery replacement goes, especially if you’re not a car guy who has jumper cables, spare battery, tools, etc. in his trunk
We test batteries as part of a routine oil change service or other scheduled maintenance service or at customer request. Batteries less than 3 years old aren’t tested unless there’s a specific problem or the customer requests it. Batteries 3 to 7 years old are tested and recommended for replacement when the available cranking amps is less than 70% of the rating on the battery, or less than 70% of the specified cranking amps required for the car if the battery tag is not legible. Batteries older than 7 years are not tested, simply recommended for replacement. That’s because a battery that old can not be relied upon to stay reliable for any length of time. The goal is not to get the most life out of the battery. The goal is to have a car that starts every time, even if you’ve been sitting listening to the radio while your wife is in the mall.
Beyond that, as was pointed out above, just because a battery starts a car doesn’t mean it’s working properly. A weak battery can almost double the amperage going through the cables to the starter and alternator, causing excessive and premature wear. An 8 year old battery will take substantially longer to recharge after a start than a new one, loading the alternator for a longer period of time. An aging battery is much more likely to fail without notice than a newer one.
I see no difference between replacing a worn out battery or a worn out tire before they fail. You don’t look at a tire with tread bars showing and say “I’ll wait until the steel cords are showing.” If I can reliably predict that a part is nearing the end of its life I will recommend replacement. My customers expect that level of professionalism.
I don’t go to those neighborhoods
Ase, I have the utmost respect for your expertise and your professionalism, but let me ask a question: do you ask the customer if he/she would like his/her battery checked? Do you show the customer when you find a weak battery or simply write it on the shop order?
The reason I ask is because almost everyone who has owned a car for at least 10 years, myself included, has encountered unsolicited recommendations from shops that were clearly based only on the shop’s desire to enhance their revenue stream. Customers are highly suspicious and, when their car is in the shop, at a very high anxiety level.
If you’re not asking the customers if they’d like their battery tested, and you’re only writing the results on the shop order and not showing he customers, you may not be having the intended result.
I understand what you’re saying, but I personally am very uncomfortable with a shop doing unauthorized tests and won’t return to a shop that does. But if they ask I’ll let them perform the test and if they show me any unacceptable findings, they’ll have earned my loyalty. And my business.
No, we don’t ask if they want a battery tested as part of an oil change/tire rotation service or a 60K or scheduled maintenance. Nor do we specifically ask if they’d like their transmission and coolant levels checked, washer fluid topped off, tire pressure checked or serpentine belt inspected for cracks. It’s part of the service. Finding and recommending a failing battery is no different than finding a burned out brake lamp or bulging radiator hose. Would you not appreciate me telling you your car has a burned out headlamp? And yes, it happens quite regularly that the car has a headlamp out and the driver has no idea.
I have no problem with recommending a battery if the testing shows it’s failing. Yesterday a regular customer brought in his daughter’s car for brake noise. The tech did the brake inspect and also checked all the fluids and tires, noted the coolant level was low and saw a leaky radiator. I gave the man the price for the brakes and also tried to sell him the radiator. An hour later he called back to OK the radiator and said his daughter has had to add coolant once a week but never mentioned it to him. Was checking the coolant level during a brake inspect something you would disapprove of? Was that an unauthorized test?
I’m reminded this works both ways. The system is not perfect. A car was in for an oil change service (long time customer), and for some reason the battery didn’t get tested. A week later he came out to his car to find a dead battery. We went and started his car, checked and replaced a bad battery, and you should have heard the riot act he read me for letting his car go through without a battery replacement that it obviously needed. You can’t win 'em all.
I agree with asemaster. I consider a mechanic to be lax if he doesn’t check for other problems while the car is on the lift or in the stall. While the number is unscientific, my rough guess is that probably 3/4 of the cars I’ve looked over had issues that the owners were not aware of; some minor, some major, and some potentially lethal.
The mechanic points out the potential problems he may be accused of make work tactics and ignoring potential problems while saying nothing brings on the accusation of not caring and doing a shoddy job.
If I were the service rep I would recommend the same thing. If it were my car I would leave the battery alone for about another four years. Subtract two years and that leaves you with two more years for your battery. Everything in life involves probability and your “current” battery is still mostly a winner.
Please understand that this is not a personal attack. I’m only pointing out that there are different perspectives on the philosophy of running tests that were not requested, and the customer often doesn’t see this practice the same way the shop does.
Do you show the customer your finding or simply write it on the order? If I’m shown a problem, I’m far more comfortable with its validity. Allow me to suggest that if the tech had shown the man the leak in his daughter’s radiator, I doubt if he would have not wanted it changed. .
I don’t consider anything you see visually while in the process of doing work in an area to be an unauthorized test. And if you did notice something, I’d want to be advised of it. I do consider anything unauthorized that requires hooking up test equipment to be an unauthorized test. I don’t consider noticing something wrong and going looking for something wrong as being the same thing. To my mind, if you see a low fluid level while working under the hood that’s noticing something. When you start hooking up test equipment, you’re looking for something wrong.
I should add that if a vehicle is brought in for a checkup, the average customer would expect that all the critical systems be checked, including testing a battery over three years old. But if a customer brings a car in for new windshield wiper blades and ends up getting told that his oil pan needs replacing, without being shown why, the customer becomes highly suspicious… and probably isn’t coming back.
No disrespect meant, I’m only trying to provide a perspective of the customer viewpoint and the fact that there are different opinions of the practice. .
mountainbike
As for those “tests that were not requested” . . .
What if the customer brings the car to the dealer for a scheduled service, as per Chevy, and the factory inspection sheet clearly says to test the battery?
Should the customer accuse the dealer of upselling the battery, because he didn’t specifically request that it be tested?
Is somebody taking this as a personal attack? I’m not. The only thing attacking me is this terrible heartburn that’s keeping me from sleeping. Too much grilled pizza and gin with home-made tonic. Ugh.
It’s pretty rare that we can actually “show” a customer something wrong. Few people wait around for their cars. Who wants to sit around a garage for hours reading old Hemmings Classic Cars magazines while we try to fleece you? Much easier to drop your car off and go home or work while we find a way to sell you a radiator in answer to your complaint of brake noise.
But seriously, where do you draw the line with “seeing something” and "using test equipment?"
I can see your coolant is full but I need to use more than my eyes and fingers to check the freeze point and pH level. Is a tire gauge not a primitive form of test equipment? Isn’t checking the transmission fluid level and condition also a form of “looking for something wrong?”
On the other side, when I tell a customer that their battery is in fine condition and should last for some time to come, isn’t that the positive outcome of testing batteries?
Replace the battery. You are running on “E”.
There is CCA and there is capacity. They are not the same thing.
A car may start after drawing 500 amps for five-seconds.
It has used 500 x 5 / 3600 = 0.7 Ah.
A cheap, low-power car radio (OE) draws about 1 amp.
Start the car, park with engine off and play the radio for 40 minutes. Your battery could die. (But the battery would have had no problem starting the car initially.)
batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_age_affects_capacity_and_resistance
BTW, “CCA” is a measure of capacity. same as Ah. It has nothing to do with zero degrees Fahrenheit. American engineers could have specified starting capacity at 0 K VVCCA (very, very, cold cranking amps) They thought 0ºF was something Americans could relate to.
The origin of the Fahrenheit scale (freezing=32º, boiling=212º) is sometimes discussed about 6th grade in German schools as indicative of American and Brit know-how, and not in a favorable way.
A conductance meter assumes that the conductance S (S for Siemens, naturally; American engineers whimsically measure conductance in mhos or reciprocal ohms, how quaint) can be expressed as S = f(σ₀,A) = σ₀ g(A) where σ₀ is the intrinsic conductance of the plates (usually lead-calcium. lead-tin, or lead-antimony) plus the conductance of the acid/water combination of the electrolyte; g(A) is everything else: the number of plates, their height, width, thickness, spacing, etc.). Over time, σ degrades and becomes less with age; g(A) remains the same.
So a new battery is advertised (at time t=0) as CCA(0) = σ₀ g(A). At a later time (=t) the conductances (=σ) is measured and, knowing CCA(0) from the label on the battery, we conclude that now, at time t, we have CCA(t) = CCA(0) σ / σ₀. Hence the requirement for knowing and plugging in the initial value of CCA. Zero degrees Fahrenheit has nothing to do with it.
Actually, the conductance σ is a function of temperature, increasing about 0.5%/deg C over the range 0ºC - 40ºC. Below freezing it falls off much more rapidly. Conductance meters worth their salt have an IR scanner built-in, by which the user scans the battery and automatically enters its temperature. Less expensive meters allow a temperature to be entered manually. The cheap Chinese meters imported into the US usually have no such provision. Good enough for Americans I suppose.
Europeans, generally speaking, do not use conductance meters to measure battery state-of-life. They tend to measure voltage drop following a moderate current draw. I asked a German engineer which was the better method, and he said that both were equally reliable, or unreliable, depending upon one’s half-full/half-empty mind set. He said that most American commercial battery testers have a printable readout, giving the date, time, and possibly the license plate number, and most importantly, the words GOOD, BAD, or RECHARGE AND RETEST. He remarked that Americans are a very litigious people, and the little slip of paper given to the customer shifts future blame to someone else. Besides, he said, most Americans would not know what the numbers mean anyway.
Time for a sabbatical for me! I’ll see you all after X-mas. Maybe I’ll come back under a new name. How about Giuseppe, and we’ll talk about Fiats?
well I stopped reading after you mentioned how germans are taught in school that Americans and brits are inferior.
attitudes like that caused a lot of death in WW2
@db4690; what if the car doesn’t start, and there’s no close auto parts store, and the neighborhood is full of unsavory characters?
You mean like politicians, lawyers & car sales men nad the like.
Yosemite
boy. i have never been so angry after reading a post as i am now, after reading mechaniker s post.
i like the way he made his little digs. pretending he was only quoting others, not just coming out and saying what he obviously believes. germans are superior.
my better half is of german descent, and i apparently have some Viking blood too, since my last name ends with “son”. i have nothing against Germanic peoples.
i despise Nazis tho…
Db, if a customer brings a car in for a scheduled servicing and the sheet says to test the battery, or if the customer brings the car in for an overall checkup, than testing the battery should be performed and IMHO can be honestly assumed to be a part of the service request, and the tech would be derelict in his/her responsibility to not do so. That’s not what I’m referring to here.
ASE, the “line” to me is that point where something unrelated to the reason the customer brought the car in and not obvious without looking for it using test equipment is found. If you have to go outside the scope of the customer’s request and actually have to search for something, it to me is unauthorized.
I don’t know that a clear and definitive line can be drawn. There’s a lot more “grey” in the day than there is black & white. If a customer drops off a car for an alignment and you test the battery without cause, that to me is an unauthorized test. But if you go to drive the car into the bay and it barely starts, the customer should be called and asked if he/she would like the battery tested. If the car simply won’t start, than checking the battery becomes essential to completing the requested alignment.
Oh, and good luck with that heartburn. Nexium is OTC now, and that stuff is expensive!
Just my 2 cents, but I don’t see Mechanker’s comment as being that grossly out of line and the points he made about methodogy and the use of a conductance meter are valid. The voltage drop method has never failed me but on the other hand I’ve seen too many irritating examples of a hand-held printout sheet stating a battery is good when it’s apparent that even to a blind, quadraplegic person that is not the case at all.
As to the German engineer’s comments about Americans I don’t see how he’s wrong.
He stated Americans are litigous. True enough, the courts are clogged for that very reason.
He stated most Americans would not understand those numbers. That’s also true enough. A few may get the “700 CCA, I only got 450 CCA…” as being insufficient but most won’t really understand it.
@ok4450
I disagree with you
I do see Mechaniker’s comments as being grossly out of line
Technically speaking, he made some good points. He obviously knows a few things
That said, I don’t think his smugness and air of superiority are appropriate at all
I believe he gets some perverse pleasure when he slams american products, people, education, engineering, etc.
I sure hope this guy is living in Germany, not the USA
If he thinks everything american is so inferior, he shouldn’t be here. His attitude is just plain wrong
Me, I love this country, I’ve been here awhile now, and I’m staying
By the way, is it possible Mechaniker’s real purpose is to criticize american stuff in general, and then sit back and watch us get worked up about his comments?
I haven’t flagged him yet, but I’m considering flagging him for abuse
Some years ago Popular Mechanics did an article on long lived, high mileage cars owned by their readers. This was before Japanese cars were perfected.
Most of the really high mileage cars were American, only one Volvo and one Mercedes. Why? American cars were basically reliable, and overdesigned, as well as easy and cheap to repair.
As a result they were worth keeping for a very long time. German cars are very sophisticated, but don’t stand the test of time since they incur very expensive repairs too early in life. As a result, many used cars in Germany get shipped to Africa, Eastern Europe and other developing areas. There they are maintained and repaired with cheap Chinese parts and most controls are disabled, so they live on in an other form.
The Japanese thankfully copied the US approach coupled with very tight quality control. So Japanese cars are also worth keeping for a very long time.
It took European car manufacturers 0ver 20 years to develop decent emission control systems when the clean air act came around. Many did not bother and withdrew from the market. The Japanese manufacturers beat even the Americans in getting good driveability while meeting emission and fuel economy standards.
German industrial equipment is quite good, generally speaking. My brother-in-law has three German Deutz tractors. The dealer is well trained to maintain them.
“Most of the really high mileage cars were American, only one Volvo and one Mercedes. Why? American cars were basically reliable, and overdesigned”
A perfect example of that reality is the post-war Hudson sedan.
In an article in Hemmings Classic Car magazine, an engineer stated that if computer-modeling had been available, the Hudson could have been 1,000 lbs lighter than it was! The Hudson engineers were so intent on building a sturdy chassis that they overbuilt it to an incredible extent.
Different strokes for different folks. I know people who insist on playing the old don’t fix things until they are broke. Maintenance is inherently preventative. If a battery is questionable I would have it replaced ensuring it is of equal or better performance compared to the battery being replaced. Also make sure the cables are inspected and cleaned. Having the charging system tested would also be advised. A battery replacement is not a major or terribly expensive repair. Being stranded on an isolated road with no cellphone coverage can be far beyond inconvenient.