Replaced the failing battery on my wife's Punto after four years. Reminded me that when I scrapped my Fiat Mirafiori at nine to ten years old it still had the original Marinelli (I think it was called that) battery on it.
What's your longest lasting one?
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No idea thinking of all the cars we have had as they have all been second hand. My battery says GM on it but there is no installation date but it looks very clean and newish so I doubt it is original.
The punto needed a new battery when it was just four years old which really surprised us at the time. It also had a bizzare fault where you had to remove the alternator to get it to charge this happened about twice. It also suffered from disco lights syndrome which required me to remove the rear light clusters and clean them isopronol (sp) every six months.
Ever since we have been running the Fords touch would we have hadn't a single electrical propblem although my dad did have to change his battery when it suddenly refused to start one morning.
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SWMBO's Saxo (owned from new) had a new battery this year, the original was nine years old. I replaced mine on the Mondeo at about nine as well, I am fairly certain that what came off was factory fitted.
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Mazda Xedos on original battery- 11 years+
Flat once in the 10 years (2003 ish) -jump start and it was OK thereafter.
It is the only car that I have kept for more than 4/5 years and in 45 years I have only ever bought 1 battery for SWMBO's car.
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The Prelude appears to have its original 'maintenance-free' battery - now 11.5 years old. I thought I would replace it - the battery - for the winter after we bought the car in 2004, but it has just kept on holding 12.75 volts so it is still in situ. This is probably tempting fate but it seems to be in better fettle than the Turkish 'Inci Aku' battery in the Beast, which is about five years old. That one has to work harder, of course.
I think the quality of the charging system has a lot to do with the longevity of any battery.
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The original battery on my Mondeo lasted 9.5 years.
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"The original battery on my Mondeo lasted 9.5 years."
Thats some battery. All my Fords (10 plus) have needed a new battery after three to four years from new. No exceptions. And the occasional alternator.
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Mike, I couldn't agree more.
I believe the Alternator and battery are very closely related.
I had a Fiat 127 and two months after the alternator packed up and replaced, the battery needed replacing.
I also had a Ford Escort that had to have the battery replaced.
Oddly enough, after the battery was changed the car then had a habit of blowing rear lights.
Then the fan blower stopped working. I got rid of it not long after this. horrible electronics..
Never had any battery or electronic related problems with the Astra I had for seven years from new.
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My dad Fiestas had the same problem after changing the battery the brake lights kept blowing. It took about two weeks for this to stop. People on here said it was due to ECU over charging while learnings its new settings.
Thinking of it I am not quite sure how the ECU can have much of an effect because the altnerator is driven by the aux belt.
Edited by Rattle on 27/10/2009 at 12:34
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My original Delco Vauxhall battery in the Cavalier lasted 15 years and conveniently died outside my garage.
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My 1999 Volvo S80 is still on its original battery @170k miles. It lives in the boot, so maybe benefits from the narrower temperature variations found there.
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A lot depends on how its driven too. If you do a lot of stop start journeys e.g using the startor motor a lot then surely the battery will wear out quicker due to more full charging cycles?
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the more you use a car battery (not to the point of flattening it which will kill it) then theoretically the longer it should last as you are clearing the plates of sulphation
NC can probably explain it better
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>>NC can probably explain it better
Sorry BB, batteries are just black boxes with terminals on the top to me - for some reason, I've never been sufficiently interested to find out anymore about them.
I've taught SWMBO to listen very carefully to the starter motor on her car, and tell me as soon as there's a hint that the motor isn't turning as quickly as it ought to - at which point, I fit a new battery. Batteries usually last about 6 years for us, and after a reasonable life like that, I don't even bother getting a multimeter out to test them.
I am beginning to look more closely, as I suspect we're going to see a lot more battery powered cars in the future.
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>>>the more you use a car battery then theoretically the longer it should last<<<
That's an affirmative bb, one of my customers used to do what he called 'cycling' the battery, in the winter months when his car wasn't used much, he would wire up a 12v bulb to the battery so that it was continually discharging, then he would fully re-charge the critter and discharge it again.
The battery was as old as Methuselah (almost!)
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i still slowly run down s/h batteries i keep in stock perro (not till fully flat mind) ,i use an old inspection lamp with the long life bulb thats as much use to my eyes these days as a half lit candle.
I then give the battery a long slow recharge.
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I was just thinking bb - back to my mobile tuning days ... it was quite common to go to a car that had been a non-starter for goodness knows how long in winter, 8" of snow on the bonnet, my 'trick' was to fit new plugs & points. make sure the timing was a few degrees BTDC, spray 'coldstart' down the venturi, jump start the critter using the Horace Batchelor method (24v), and spin the thing over with the throttle wide open until the friction gave some sort of compression and it would (eventually) start, this method would rarely fail ... couldn't do it to todays cars of course (hehe!)
Edited by Webmaster on 30/10/2009 at 00:48
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Car batteries fitted to new cars always seem to last two or three times longer than their eventual replacements.
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Stuartli, I bet that's because the batteries have not sat on a Halford's shelf for 6 months !
he he
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Stuartli I bet that's because the batteries have not sat on a Halford's shelf for >> 6 months !>>
But the longevity also applies to exhaust systems and other major components.
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My 51 reg Volvo S60 is still on its original battery (and exhaust system). At 150,000 miles though, it's not exactly been used for short runs about town. As with OldSock's S80, it's tucked away cosily in the boot. I don't know if this makes a difference.
Edited by DP on 27/10/2009 at 14:39
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Slightly OT but my mobile battery has just died aged four months. Luckily my operator are sending me a new one free of charge. It just shows how reliable car batteries actually are.
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10 Years for SWMBO's 1999 Mercedes W202 (C Class).
It needed a new battery earlier this year, and as far as I can tell the old one was the original MB one.
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I changed the battery on my 99T 306 diesel at 9 years old because starting seemed to be getting a little harder. Turned out I needn't have bothered - it just needed the terminals cleaning. Not bad for a diesel.
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Eleven Years and still going strong Ford Fiesta Registered August 1998 -Ford Battery has First Charge Date Week 2698 !
Andrew
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9.5 years in the old Polo - can't remember what make it was, but had VW/Audi/Skoda/Seat, etc stamped on it. Died in mid December 06.
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My old 1990 Bluebird was still running happily on its original battery when sold two years ago - so 17 years.
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My grandfather's Triumph Acclaim needed a new battery when it was 9 years old. He left the sidelights on for three months while he was on holiday. The original was a Unipart I think.
My dad's previous Punto had it's first battery replaced at 9 years old - it was a Magneti Marelli, and didn't look big enough to start a moped, let alone a car.
Most of my cars seem to get five years at most out of a battery. My shortest battery life was a Fiat X1/9 - it was three months old, when heavy rain water-logged the fusebox while the car was parked, causing the battery to go completely flat. It took three days of drying out before the car was right again.
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...the more you use a car battery then theoretically the longer it should last...
This could explain why batteries seem to last longer these days - there are so many electrically operated systems and gadgets on modern cars.
When I worked at a 'proper garage' in the 1970s we seemed to change an awful lot of batteries.
Sealed for life ones seemed to be a step forward, as did the widespread adoption of alternators.
I think a modern battery is still a mixture of lead and acid, but I wonder if the materials/the way they are used has improved somehow over the years.
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