rev up your engines, today I'm going to give you five ways you can make your car
battery last as long as it possibly can, now car batteries get more and more
expensive these days, sometimes the average battery will be 140 dollars, you
want to make sure your battery lasts as long as possible
now the first trick to making your battery lasts as long as possible is, use
it all the time, now I know that sounds counterintuitive but it's not, but car
batteries aren't like cell phone batteries, you use your cell phone the
battery drains, eventually it runs out of electricity, but car batteries aren't
that way, they start your car up but once they start your car, then your alternator
kicks in and the alternator recharge the battery and runs the engine, car
batteries are made so that they discharge a little, start the car then
recharge as the alternator recharges them, if you just let a car battery sit you
don't use it, they actually go bad just sitting, now if you don't use your car
much it's a good idea to get one of these battery tender type things, what it
does is, you hook it up to the battery and it does a little trickle charge and
then every once in a while, it takes a little energy out of the battery so it's
like exercising the battery so it stays strong, let's say you're not using your
car much, it's a good idea to use one of those or just take the battery out of
the car when you're not using it, if it's sitting for weeks or months at a time
leave it on one of those machines and then put it back in the car when you're
gonna use it, I personally use one all the time because I live in downtown
Houston, got three cars, and I don't drive any of them all that much, so whenever I
check it with my battery checking machine, it almost always says good battery
but needs recharge, I just put them on the charger for a while, if you don't use
your car much, hey every once in a while it's a
good idea to put a little charge into the battery because it will get weak
just sitting there, now the next trick to making your battery lasts as long as
possible, is to keep the terminals clean and remove any corrosion and nice and
tight.
because corrosion or loose terminals create more resistance and the
more resistance in an electrical circuit the harder the battery has to work to
send electricity to it it will have a tendency of getting hot
spots, that will eventually wear the battery out faster, all you need is one of
these 99-cent cleaners it's real good for
cleaning them off, just scrape all the corrosion off of them, then get some
spray electrical cleaner, I'm using mass airflow sensor cleaner it's the same
thing it actually costs more, but I've got cases of this stuff so I use that to
clean off any electrical problems, and then get rid of any residue that might be
lying around, then once it dries get some of this battery spray terminal protector
and spray it on the terminals, that seals the battery acid vapor from getting and
eating it up spray both of them, that way the corrosion won't come back and you
won't have any problems with those areas getting too hot from a weak connection
and then making the battery work too hard and burn itself out early, now the
next thing to ensure that your battery lasts as long as it can, is make sure you
have the correct battery in your car in the first place
now batteries have ratings on them, I'll show you this one, as you can see right
here, this battery has a cold cranking amps
rating of 700 cold cranking amps, now that's rather large for the Celica and
there's a reason for that, originally it came with a 500 cold cranking amp
battery, but since I don't put that many miles on it
I kept having to replace the stupid batteries every couple of years, but when
I switched to the 700 cold cranking amp battery
I haven't had to replace this one for five years so far, a lot of times you're
actually better putting a better battery in than the one that it came with, the
main purpose of the battery is to start the car, it needs a lot of power once it's
started, the alternator kicks in and charges everything up, so the main focus
of the battery is to actually start the car up, and I know a lot of guys say, hey
Scotty well when they make the cars they put a small battery and isn't it the way
it's supposed to be, no that's just because it's cheaper to make a car that
way, and of course they weigh a little bit less the cheaper batteries and you
got like 1/1000 of better gas mileage for the few pounds you save but
it's mainly because it's cheaper to make them that way, now the next way to
make your battery last as long as possible, is every once in a
while have your alternator checked, because the alternator works in tandem with the
battery, if one of the other is weak it can harm the other one, if you have a
weak alternator it's going to make the battery work harder and wear it out faster
and especially if you have an alternator let's say the diodes are going bad in it and
it overcharges, it will actually burn out
your battery by giving it too much electricity and destroying it, an
alternator is called an alternator because it actually creates alternating
electricity, then the diodes and the internals of the alternator transform
that into direct electricity, and when things break sometimes the alternator
will actually put out alternating electricity of way too high voltage and
that will destroy the battery, it doesn't take a mechanic three minutes to check
your alternator, you can even buy one of these Topdon checkers yourselves, their like
50 bucks or so and they do a pretty good job of checking your battery and
your alternator, you want to have them tested every once in a while, because
when they are going out it's better to change them sooner than later, because
on modern a cars and my own customers cars, I have had more cars come over here
with weird problems, check engine lights on, they're running bad, they start up but
they don't run right and the root problem is either a weak battery, or a
weak alternator, so that's something to always check when you have a problem in
a car right off the bat these days because everything's computer run and
computers are very sensitive about their voltage that's being supplied to them,
and if it's incorrect all kinds of wacky things can happen to your car that you
don't want, now the last trick to making your battery last as long as possible is
to check the battery acid level that's inside the battery every once in a while,
you just pop the top off and look inside if you can see the water level like in these
it's perfectly fine, plates need to be covered with the battery acid if you
see them that means it's low, just get some distilled water and pour it in
until they're covered up again, now years ago they were pushing sealed batteries,
where you couldn't add water, now it wasn't that the battery acid inside some of
it didn't evaporate, it still had vents but those are made that it would
evaporate much slower, still when it evaporated you couldn't add anymore and you
had to buy a new battery, so the best batteries for a long life are
really the ones where you can take the top off and check them, unless you're
someone who never checks anything, and if you or your wife never checks in
anything, you're better off with the sealed battery, because even though it
evaporates some, it evaporates slower and a sealed battery that you do no
maintenance at all will last longer than a battery that has tops that come off,
and as I said if you do have one with tops and come off use distilled water
because local water usually has a lot of minerals in it, and then the minerals
will settle to the bottom of the plates of the battery and short the thing out,
so now you know five ways that you can let your car battery last as long as
possible, so you won't get stranded somewhere or even worse, have a car that has damage
done to it electronically because of a problem in the battery or the wiring, so
if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to
ring that Bell!