today on Steve Robb reviews I'm gonna have some fun we're going to discuss how do you test an
automotive battery and many times especially us do-it-yourselfers make some critical mistakes
we end up either buying a new battery end up buying a new starter well there could be all
kinds of occurrences going on when you don't test correctly so what I like to do all the
time when I'm testing is learn from the pros and I've learned many times from the pros on
YouTube that yeah I used to make some valid well valid mistakes the biggest one is using
your multimeter when you're testing your battery and you measure voltage well what did you prove
well you proved absolutely nothing except your reading of voltage reading and that's it and
many times it's gonna send you sideways big-time because a lot of times you'll think for sure your
battery is good when in fact it's not so let's take a look today at how I test an automotive
battery I got an example right here let's take a look and let's see if you could notice there's
something definitely wrong here well let's look at the battery right there 230 cold cranking amps
this battery was made in March 2017 and we've got a reading here of 13:1 and of course I've got it
on the charger and it says look it's charged so let's take a look at this a little more in-depth
and see exactly what's wrong here well all I've done is taking the battery charger off my meter
showing 12.5 and now I've got my actual battery tester on it so let's just go through the menu
here and go to cold cranking amps 230 because that's what this is rated at 230 and let's see
what it does 70 cold cranking amps and the battery fails well right there you can see that you had
the proper voltage the fully charged battery is 12 6 and this just came off the charger so you
know it was charged straight up and of course you can use this old style as well but on every
circuit I've ever worked on what I like to do and what the professionals like to do is put a
load on the circuit to see if it actually can hold the load because you know what a voltage
reading on anything well it doesn't really tell you whether it can carry the amount of amperage
for the circuit so when you're testing a battery it's the same way you really can't put a load on
it but you can use one of these battery testers and this little one here that I've shown before
it's it's a small little compact unit it does a great job and you know the old toaster styles
they do a good job - they put a load under because you know what happens most times is you don't run
into this this is not a normal thing that happens but it does happen enough especially on a battery
that's been discharged and what are the first people do well they give it a boost they get
home and or whatever a piece of equipment you have you go to start it again and it's well you're down
to very low amperage right this is the only way that I know of to checking a battery properly or
using the old-style toasters there's all kinds of variances on different types of these testers I
like this one the best and you know when you're thinking about testing any circuit most people
just look at the voltage reading but you know you can have too little small tiny hairs of
wires touching and it'll give you the proper voltage and but for most times now you're not
gonna run into that so well I've got a phone call what's going on here no I don't think so
well first time that's ever happen okay okay so that's pretty well this today and I just thought
I'd show you if you happen to get a battery that is uh you don't really discharge you charge it
back up and you take a look at the voltage and it shows fully charged doesn't mean the matter
is any good and I've seen so many people miss togusa battery and go for the starter next and
you know many times that's an expensive proposition when if you would have just
checked the battery in the first place and put it underneath a load and that's what these do so
thanks for joining me here today if you ever seen this channel before you're welcome to subscribe
come back again and we'll do some testing in the future on more stuff like this - Cheers
you