Charging Batteries

Know when to expect battery problems

• 3-year-old Battery: More than 30% of vehicles with batteries 3 years or older experience battery failure.
• Heat: Whether from climate or high under-hood operating temperatures, heat accelerates corrosion in the battery.
• Extreme Cold: Retards the battery’s chemical reaction that creates the cranking power in a vehicle and increases the current needed to start a vehicle.
• Constant Cranking with Little Driving: Drains battery power without giving the vehicle’s charging system a chance to recharge the battery.

Where you live affects your battery’s life expectancy

Compare the age of your battery with the average life expectancy of batteries in your part of the country. Generally, batteries used in colder climates last longer than those used warmer climates.

Visit your local Dealer to have your battery tested

Visit an Interstate Batteries dealer that has the ED-18 diagnostic system and the expertise to detect problems with your battery and electrical system before your battery fails. By performing a battery/electrical system check, we can help save you the time, money and frustration associated with unexpected battery or electrical system failures. Our advanced ED-18 system measures conductance, or the battery’s ability to deliver current, to predict at what temperature a battery may fail to start your vehicle.

Early Detection: Play it safe

The purpose of preventive maintenance—or early detection—is to locate an automotive problem before a failure leaves you stranded along the roadside or in a parking lot. This may be as simple as looking for cracks in a belt or excess wear on the brake pads or tires. Interstate Batteries, America’s #1 replacement brand battery, now has exclusive breakthrough technology that allows us to perform an early-detection test on your vehicle’s battery. Even though your vehicle started today, battery failure could be just around the corner.

Discover your battery’s condition in a few minutes

The ED-18 Early Detection Test not only determines if a battery is good or bad; it can detect if it is marginal. These are the three possible conditions of your battery:

• Bad: replace as soon as possible
• Marginal: prone to failure in moderate to extreme heat or cold
• Good: retest in about six months

What does a “Marginal” reading mean?

A battery’s performance abruptly drops just before it fails to start the vehicle. Before that abrupt drop, the battery may start the vehicle but it’s performance has begun to decline. It is said to be marginal. Extreme heat or cold could cause a marginal battery to completely fail.

Summer Battery Care Tips​

Why is it that people only tend to think about their car battery in the winter? The fact is, summer heat can be even more damaging than winter’s cold temperatures when it comes to car batteries. And yet, few people give batteries a thought during the heat of summer. The cold hard truth is that:

• When the mercury rises, a car battery's strength goes down.
• Extreme heat, like 95° F outside combined with high temperatures under the hood, accelerates corrosion of car batteries.
• Heat causes the water to evaporate out of battery fluid, breaking down the battery grids.

Weak batteries can struggle on for months, turning over the engine while it's easy to start and generate a charge. The real test comes when temperatures drop. A weakened battery has to overcome cold temperatures and a harder-to-crank engine because the cold thickened the engine's oil. The heat's attack lowered the battery's starting power, meaning someone's going to have to call for a jump-start and a replacement battery — unless you get there first.

The following tips help you keep your battery in shape throughout the hot summer months:

• Preventive maintenance goes a long way toward prolonging the life of your battery. Take a few minutes to read about your battery in your car’s manual and become familiar with what kind of battery it is, where it is, how to safely clean it and what the indicator lights inside your car might be trying to tell you.
• When working with your battery, always wear protective eyewear. Remove all jewelry and wear long sleeves to protect your arms from battery acid.
• Visually inspect the battery to see if the battery case is bulging, cracked or leaking.If it is, it's time to replace it.
• The summer heat can speed up internal corrosion. Clean up the battery connections by removing any corrosion, lead oxidation, paint or rust from the top of the battery with a scouring pad or brass brush. Be sure to brush the corrosion away from you.
• If your battery has removable filler caps, open the caps and check the water level in each cell.
• Make sure the plates are covered by the fluid inside. This prevents sulfation and reduces the possibility of an internal battery explosion.
• If the water level is low, add distilled water until the plates are covered. Don't use tap water.
• Avoid overfilling, especially in hot weather, because the heat can cause the solution inside to expand and overflow.