I had bought a new battery for my 85 e150 about a year ago. The van has been sitting for about 10 months now. about 8 months ago I tried to start the van but the battery was completely dead. nothing....

Should I take it out and return it to the store and let them charge and check it or just charge it myself and start using it in my 88 van?
I think it is a duralast gold with a 3 year free replacement.

IF one of the interior lights had been left on and it pulled the battery all the way down for months, will it still be any good?

Thanks
Anna

 

The worst thing you can do to a battery is to let it sit in a discharged state, I would try to get it replaced.

 

Auto start type Batteries don't "like" to be heavily discharged or left in an uncharged condition and high temperatures will accelerate a fault called permanent sulfation. Careful recharging might bring it back to useful service, but it should be load tested and other tests, to make sure it is not defective from sitting for so long. This is important.

A good auto parts store should be able to do this for no cost to you, some use what is called a conductance tester. Keep in mind a defective battery can damage an alternator or other electrical parts and, a defective alternator can damage the new battery, etc.

Don't attempt to charge a dead battery with the vehicle alternator, if for example a jump start is necessary in an emergency, put the battery on a charger overnight as soon as practical and charge thoroughly.

Sent from a pay phone

 

Well they tested it and it wouldn't take a charge so they replaced it!!

Something I had never thought about when it comes to warranties. I have owned the 85 van a bit longer then I remembered..The battery was dated 12-2014 and carried a 3 year full replacement warranty .. The new replacement is dated 12-2016 but will only be warranted for the remainder of the original battery warranty, 1 year..

So if according to AZ, if you have 1 month left on your warranty and your battery goes bad, your new replacement will only have a 1 month warranty..

 

I think everybody does that with battery warranties.

I was upset when I found out the hard way.

 

I guess long gone are the days when you buy something that will outlast the warranty.

Seems like if a product was really that good, they would be willing to stand behind the warranty for the same amount of time on the new replacement..

But then they would have to sell a battery that was built to last beyond the full term of the warranty.

BTW it was not the same battery, unless unless changed the case design because there was a definite difference in the way they looked. My guess is that they changed suppliers that brand their batteries.

 

They prorate it. Otherwise people would buy a battery and then demand a new one every few years, for the rest of their life. Heck, people try to do that anyway.

Sent from a pay phone

 

Keep it on a trickle charger if you have no reason to put it in the van ie it's not running.

 

Not at all, your battery wasn't defective. There's not a lead-acid battery made today, or in the past, that could survive what your battery went through. Completely discharging a battery is about the worst thing that can be done to them, and the longer they sit the worse it is. It's not common for a battery to survive a deep discharge for even a few hours, let alone months on end.

You got a freebie, you can't blame the battery for that, or their warranty policy.

I've never had a battery fail at 3 years before...in fact the parts store-brand battery in my '97 Lincoln had a date code of '03 and was still in working order last year when I sold the car. Conditions and type of use mean everything to battery life. Sadly those of you down south will replace them more than we do up north. Heat kills batteries, and the best explanation I've heard was that warm weather accelerates the evaporation of the electrolyte.

 

I have one of those little 1.8 watt solar battery maintainers that can plug into the cigarette lighter plug or clamps onto the the battery. Would 1.8 watts be enough to keep a new battery from discharging?
http://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/si...tainer600w.jpg

I bought it a few years ago and tried to use it to charge a cell phone. If I remember correctly, when the sun was not on the solar panel, the phone battery would discharge so I didn't use it. I think I read it would need a diode? in the line to prevent that from happening.

I don't know if it would have the same effect on a large battery..

 

Probably not, modern cars and trucks have lots of power draws on the battery even when everything is working right. Best thing to do is get a smart charger like a small Battery Tender.

Sent from a pay phone

 

My garage queen BMW gets a new battery about once every 4 years. I put a trickle charger on it for the winter, but I have been sloppy and let a few batteries run down during the summer or fall when I don't drive the car enough. If they sit discharged for any length of time, they will be dead... I just got a new battery a couple months ago although I paid about 2/3 of the full price based on the pro-rata warranty. Batteries last the longest in a daily driver.

If you get a free replacement for a battery, why would you expect any more warranty time than that based on the original battery? (Of course, if you killed the new battery and went to another store in the chain and claimed you lost your receipt, they *might* base the warranty on the sticker date...)

Batteries are fairly cheap these days...less than a full tank of $4 per gallon gas in a van.

Good luck,
George

 

Most battery chargers won't charge a battery if it's lower than 10 volts I believe. It might be 9. Anyways, with a pair of jumper cables, I hook up a charged battery in parallel with the uncharged battery and then hook up the charger. The charger will sense the voltage of the good battery and turn on. Once the low charged battery gets over 10 volts, you can disconnect the good battery. I've done this with batteries that were dead for a couple years and used then for at least a couple more. Won't work on a battery with a dead cell, though.

 

Just another tip. Any time I know one of my vehicles is going to sit for a while, I unhook the negative cable. It doesn't take very long to do and it's just a little extra insurance against power drains.

And I know all about battery returns/warranties. My dad and my one brother ran wal mart everstart ( what I called "Neverstarts" ) batteries in their vans. There was a 3 or 4 year period where the battery would fail towards the end of winter. We'd have to remove them and return/exchange them. Finally I got sick of them and swapped to a different brand battery. And haven't had a battery issue with them since.