Car batteries Mt Wellington – Understanding how to keep your car battery from going dead, could save you a lot of time, money and frustration.
Birds have to fly, fish have to swim, and batteries have to die. Whether it’s a parasitic drain, normal self-discharge, or simply wearing out, the ways a battery can die are manifold.
Luckily, the ways to keep a battery from dying are almost as numerous. The key is to identify the reason a battery died or the factor that could potentially cause it to die in the future and address it head-on.
Keeping the Weather from Killing Your Battery
There isn’t a lot you can do to protect your battery from the ravages of hot summer weather or the bitter cold of winter, aside from garaging. If that is an option, then the lack of extreme temperature swings may help your battery last longer than it otherwise would.
However, the best way to help prevent hot or cold from killing a battery is to just make sure it’s always in the best shape possible. What that means is that a battery that is properly maintained is better equipped to handle the types of severe temperature swings that can cause problems.
Keeping a Parasitic Drain from Killing Your Battery
Identifying a parasitic drain before it kills your battery can be tough since you typically won’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Although it’s easy to leave your headlights on accidentally without noticing, that type of situation actually has an outward indicator that something is wrong.
In the case of many parasitic drains, the component that’s drawing amperage when your car is off does nothing to draw your attention. That’s until you go to start your car and hear the starter motor click fruitlessly.
The good news is that, unless your battery is already old and worn out, it won’t happen. Going dead one time from a parasitic drain isn’t going to cause too much lasting damage. The key is to identify the source of the drain, and fix it. Then prevent the battery from being drained down multiple times.
Keeping Your Battery from Dying During Storage
Depending on how long you plan on leaving a vehicle in storage, you may not need to do anything at all. Simply disconnecting the battery could do the trick. However, self-discharge will cause even a new battery to slowly lose charge.
Lead-acid batteries do have a relatively slow self-discharge rate of about 5 percent each month. Long-term storage can allow normal self-discharge to drain a battery to a dangerous level.
If you want to prevent your battery from dying during a long period of storage, there are two solutions. The first is to charge it up from time to time. The other is to use a float charger that automatically charges when the battery drops below a certain voltage level.
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