Yesterday I pulled the trigger on replacing my 6 year old batteries. As some of you know I'm taking a road trip from Connecticut to Florida and back in late September. I am retiring in July and wanted to incur the expense while I'm still employed as well as the batteries I went with were on sale. With that in mind I'm not planning to actually replace the batteries until late August and wanted to ask for comments on preserving the new batteries until installation time. I know that they shouldn't be placed on a concrete floor. I do have a dual port BatteryTender and am wondering if I should connect them to the BatteryTender to keep them charge? Is there anything else that I should do to keep them "like new" until August.

As with just about everything I do, prior to making a purchase is to do a bunch of research around what I'm purchasing. I wound up going with the Northstar NSB-AGM65s. I hope I get the 10 years out of them that they claim. One of the deciding factors was that Northstar is a US company. Not sure if like some companies based in the US, their parts are manufactured in another country and final assembly in the US.

 

Supposedly there are only 4-5 companies that make all the car batteries. I have found that the Wal-mart Everstart batteries are, for the price, just as good as anything else and have good reviews.

 

Never buy batteries till you need them, they age from day one. When buying batteries, check the code date to see when they were manufactured, some retailers have them on the shelf for over a year. I am still using my 8-1/2 year old original batteries.

Since you jumped the gun all you can do is keep them fully charged, the Battery Tender will do that, and it might be best to just use it for a week each month. The electricity cost will eat into your savings a bit.

 

I se no reason not to just install them. You say that the ones in the truck are 6 years old. They are on the down side of life so just go ahead and swap them out. I see no reason to buy batteries and let them sit on a shelf. Even thought they were on sale batteries go on sale all the time. You could have gone online and got a coupon from ford for batteries for $99 each for Motorcraft batteries. I have had good luck with them. The stock ones not so much.

 

It is a myth that storing batteries on a concrete floor accelerates discharge. You can store them virtually anywhere and they will discharge over time. In order to preserve them the most efficient way would be store them in a climate controlled room and connect a automatic charger on them to keep them topped off. Storing batteries using this method will not affect their longevity more than the amount of time they were stored.

 

That myth has its origins in the distant past when battery cases were made of hard rubber. The rubber absorbed moisture and a damp concrete floor aided in causing an electrical path between cells. But it makes folks happy thinking they are actually doing good.

 

One of the benefits of periodic boost charging a stationary battery is it mixes up the electrolyte. What happens is, if a battery sits idle for a while the specific gravity of the electrolyte stratifies into layers. If the battery is stored on a cold concrete floor it aggravates that. Batteries can't supply as much current in cold temperatures, but it is actually heat or high temperatures that really puts the hurt on them. They store better (hold their charge) in cold temps, they don't self-discharge as quickly. "Batteries die in July, they just don't fall over till November". My garage turns into a sauna in the summer, if I'm not using a battery, I'll keep it in the house where it's cool.

Took a road trip out west this spring and it got pretty cold, started getting a little concerned about the battery since it's 5 years old. Stopped at a garage and got an oil change and had them test the battery, had a pretty fancy Snap On wireless unit. The guy kept asking "did you just charge this"? "Well yeah a couple weeks ago I guess". It's a NAPA battery rated at 590 CCA and tested at 720 CCA, this had him scratching his head for a while. Keep them charged up helps them live longer than they ordinarily would.

Pretty much the first overnight hard cold snap of the season will put a run on batteries that next morning. *click* because they are all sulfated up permanently.

 

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My 2003 Thunderbird still has the original battery in it. It's been sitting on a battery tender since 2003. I drive the car or take it to a show for the weekend and it's right back on the tender when I get home. Fortunately my garage is cool. I wish there were a way to keep these new Northstar AGM batteries on a battery tender. I would have to keep an extension cord outside and find someplace to put the Battery Tender. I do have an "extra" 2 bank battery tender. The thing I find interesting is that I take my Thunderbird for a cruise, come home, put the thing in the garage, connect the Battery Tender and the battery is always / has always been less than 80% charged. I sort of thought that maybe the battery would be 85 - 90% fully charged after driving the car. Just find it odd that it's always been, according to the Battery Tender, below 80%.

 

Really think you are over thinking it, those batteries have a 70% charge from factory and a two year shelf life. Another month isn't an issue, I will say don't expect 10 years out of them, more realistic around 7 years. EnerSys says the battery has up to a 10 year float life which is different than in use service life. There is another battery from the same company sold as the Odyssey Extreme which has a higher duty and float rating.

 

One thing to check for is for any excess parasitic or "phantom" loads. This will kill a battery long before its time. Modern cars and trucks have all kinds of security systems and computer controlled modules and gee gaws that tend to run on for quite a while after shutdown, for as much as half an hour or more. This is like leaving the headlights on as far as current draw is concerned, so even if there are no defects it still tends to put the battery behind the 8 ball over time if only short tripped. Normally 50 to 75 milliamps is considered acceptable.

Keep them charged up and the battery service life will be maximized. New batteries are always "hard" and don't reach full capacity till they've been through several start/charge cycles. I put them on a charger overnight before installation. Check the date code and buy fresh stock. Keep "pumping" them up with an external charger the first week or so, a maintenance free battery measures 12.80 volts at 70 F, and might take a few days of use and charging to get there. The 12.6 volts figure often cited is obsolete, that was the spec for old school conventional pure lead-acid batteries with filler caps for watering. Sealed maintenance free batteries use a different alloy and chemistry, so the cell voltage is slightly higher.

This open circuit voltage difference between battery types is only a couple tenths, but this is actually quite a lot percentage wise and represents maybe an 80% charge, not 100%. It takes about as long to charge up the last 20% as the first 50% or whatever. Once the plates start to sulfate permanently due to chronic undercharging, forget it, charging a battery with permanent sulfation has been compared to trying to wash your hands while wearing rubber gloves. Keep them plussed up and they won't sulfate in the first place!

Make sure ground cables and connections to the block and frame, alternator, etc., are clean and bright and tight. If it's a 2003 model year, they need going over. Fresh cables won't hurt. Even a paper thin, nearly invisible layer of corrosion is enough to cause poor charging, a high current low voltage charging system doesn't like any resistance, just a few hundredths of an ohm will reduce alternator output by about 30%

 

I have a battery tender on my GT500 and a Cteck on a battery on the shelf I took out of the truck in case I need a spare for the dune buggy or another car.

 

One thing; I did read another thread in the Super Duty forum that my '13 6.7 has a Battery Management System (BMS). From what I read which is in the owner's manual is that when you replace your batteries you need to let the truck sit for 8 hours for the BMS to adjust. Then there is a battery life monitor that needs to be set to be reset by a dealer or Forscan.

Ted, thanks for the post "Once the plates start to sulfate permanently due to chronic undercharging, forget it ..." kind of explains why my Thunderbird battery is still alive after 16+ years. It's always on the battery tender. Sometimes I load up the car the day before I head out to a show and run an extension cord to the trailer and plug the battery tender in while it's in the trailer overnight. Of course while out at a show for the weekend it's off the tender as usually can't find an outlet outside at a hotel not to mention that they always make me park in the back of the hotel well away from the building. I will try to get the tender on the new batteries in the truck for the 1st few months and bring them up to fully charged. I do have a pretty big parasitic draw, the truck has the perimeter alert system in it. In the documentation that comes with the perimeter alert system says that if the truck isn't started in 48 hours the system will be disabled to preserve the charge in the batteries. That kind of tells me that the system has a pretty decent draw.

 

Most of the newer vehicles have this problem. that is why they have sleep mode. There were lots of complaints about dead batteries because some computer stuff would drain the battery. So they put in sleep mode. I think the alarm still works but if someone tries to brake in the truck will wake up and sound the alarm.
I also have a battery tender and use it on my GT500. I also have a Cetk charger. It has a anti sulfate mode to fix the problem.
check these guys out for your T Bird Chuck B https://smartercharger.com/

 

Thanks, I'll check them out. I'm now scared to death of the BMS; swapping out the batteries or putting the battery tender on my 250. I know it says "may" have issues with BMS shutting down systems, but my luck is the "if it's going to happen to someone it's going to happen to me" kind of luck.