Battery issue

[dave225]

Now that this post has resurfaced.......
The original battery was Exide with a suprisingly low 580 CCA rating. Exide themselves, after telling them the story, almost guaranteed it had sulponation and would be permanently compromised, so in the end the garage was good enough to go 50/50 on a Bosch S5 (750 CCA). 
It's a shame my Optima Yellow Top wouldn't fit in the 9-5 or else I'd have kept it. It was a proper deep cycle battery and much more tolerant to being in a low state of charge (not that it ever was).

[nine-fiver]

My comment on using a Deep Cycle charge was referring to the use of a deep cycle charger, as used for marine or truck applications. These chargers use toroidal transformers and smart electronics that flatten the battery and then recharge it, diagnosing and pulse cycling the input voltage. These chargers are a step up on the standard auto constant feed units and are not much more expensive than the stock charger.
Referring to the comment that the car runs smoother with a fully topped up battery is simple enough. The alternator is essentially off and the engine has less drag on it, as it has little or nothing to do.

Interestingly my 9-3 Hirsch has a new Calcium battery in it. Wow. Massive current capability and it is half the weight, among all the environmental benefits. Cranking speed is very fast. Lots of punch.

[Petemate]

Very interesting nine-fiver. just been on the Halfrauds site to find that the battery for my Tid Sportwagon is only £96.99 with a 4 yr guarantee. I reckon that would compare well with a GM one from the dealer?

[collywobble]

I replaced the original one on our 9-5 with a Varta Silver E44 which cost £110.80 from a local supplier.

There is a company on the web called 'battery megastore' who offer the same battery for £70.95 delivered.  It's worth fitting it yourself and disposing of the old one for a £40 saving!

[Petemate]

Excellent collywobble - Varta are good batteries and mine comes up as just under 70 squid. I have them bookmarked! Ta.

[aerojon]

http://www.tayna.co.uk/E44-Varta-Silver-Car-Battery-577400078-P7726.html

[Petemate]

Thanks aerojon - that is also bookmarked.

[warmrain]

My comment on using a Deep Cycle charge was referring to the use of a deep cycle charger, as used for marine or truck applications. These chargers use toroidal transformers and smart electronics that flatten the battery and then recharge it, diagnosing and pulse cycling the input voltage. These chargers are a step up on the standard auto constant feed units and are not much more expensive than the stock charger.
Referring to the comment that the car runs smoother with a fully topped up battery is simple enough. The alternator is essentially off and the engine has less drag on it, as it has little or nothing to do.

Interestingly my 9-3 Hirsch has a new Calcium battery in it. Wow. Massive current capability and it is half the weight, among all the environmental benefits. Cranking speed is very fast. Lots of punch.

"...that flatten the battery and then recharge it..."  May I just emphasise that it is not a good idea to deliberately fully discharge a lead-acid car battery and then recharge it.  Car batteries have a different internal structure to alternative designs of lead-acid battery which are designed to better withstand full cycles of almost complete discharge and then recharge.  If you explore and read all the information in the link I previously provided, you will see that if you "deep cycle" a normal car battery, you will likely just get a dozen cycles out of it before it fails.  A battery designed to better withstand deep discharge (with a different thicker plate structure -- such as some "marine" batteries that you mention) will give you more than a hundred deep discharge-recharge cycles.  The trade off is that it will not supply such a high (short term -- for seconds) instantaneous current eg. 600-800 amps relative to the same size of battery that you get with a common car battery.  [This is the CCA figure you see on car batteries.] The high current capability is useful for turning over your starter motor.

Take home message:-  DO NOT DEEP DISCHARGE YOUR CAR BATTERY IF YOU CAN AVOID DOING SO. You will seriously shorten its life.

Some truck batteries have a mixed mode internal plate design to allow for deep discharge and also deliver a high short term current capability [CCA].  The "calcium" type lead-acid battery has nothing to do with how much CCA (cold cranking amperes) it can deliver -- this is determined by how finely granular and therefore surface area the plates have.  The calcium alloy just helps to delay corrosion on the plates -- one factor affecting battery life.  Incidentally, "calcium" lead-acid batteries tend to show 5% higher voltage for the same level of charge. This is a function of the physics of the materials.

Lastly, I don't think the alternator affects the smoothness of the engine.  It is permanently attached and engaged via the drive belt and spins all the time.  Because of, and relative to the mass and inertial momentum of the spinning internal components it matters little in terms of loading whether you draw a current or not. It is available all the time.  It is only the air conditioning compressor which has a clutch which disengages the compressor when it is not needed and makes a measurable difference (albeit small) to the load on the engine.

Regards.

[aerojon]

just to add to rains post,the longer the battery is left in a discharged state the more sulphation is occuring & the chance of saving it reduces as the time goes by..

[dw]

AS a general rule is it better to install a Calcium battery in a standard car than a non Calcium battery?

[wrighar]

An alternator does put a heavy load on a car if the battery is flat, of if you are using lots of electrics.

On a race car we used to run we would disconnect the alternator for over takes as the extra horsepower (100A at 13.5v) was worth it.

Fully reapeatable on the rolling road.

2 HP, when at idle a car may only be making 5-10hp.

[warmrain]

An alternator does put a heavy load on a car if the battery is flat, of if you are using lots of electrics.

On a race car we used to run we would disconnect the alternator for over takes as the extra horsepower (100A at 13.5v) was worth it.

Fully reapeatable on the rolling road.

2 HP, when at idle a car may only be making 5-10hp.

Interesting practice about "disconnecting the alternator" -- was this done with a switch to electrically isolate the alternator, or some form of clutch to disconnect the mechanical drive to the alternator?  I presume you still had a battery to drive the ignition during these times?

I agree that the alternator would have to draw some power from the engine to drive the electrical generation and if you were really drawing CONTINUOUSLY, 100amp at 13.5v then 2hp seems about right. [100 x 13.5 = 1350W ; 1W=0.0013410 hp ; equals 1.81 hp,  and the energy has to ultimately come from somewhere..] 

However I would dispute that the alternator puts a "heavy" load on the engine under normal circumstances and certainly not in respect of charging the battery.  The output voltage on a normal alternator is set to limit at 14.5v and even with a fairly discharged battery I would expect after a few minutes of charging, for the current flow into the battery to drop to no more than 10 or 15 amp as a maximum due to back voltage from the reactions taking place in the battery.  That equals just over 200w max, or less than 0.3 hp.  In the context of driving along at a reasonable speed and the horsepower expended on that (certainly more than 5hp!) I think it cannot really be considered a "heavy" load.

[warmrain]

AS a general rule is it better to install a Calcium battery in a standard car than a non Calcium battery?

I think manufacturers are more likely to offer a longer guarantee on Calcium lead-acid batteries than non-calcium, presumably on the basis that they think it is less likely to suffer plate corrosion and so customers are less likely to need to claim.  Apart from that, the quality in my opinion depends more on how much care the particular manufacturer is prepared to put into the construction of the internal plates etc.  This unfortunately is very much an unknown and you can only hope that a "premium brand" manufacturer will take more care over this great unseen and unadvertised part of their battery. 

Simple guide perhaps would be to buy the one with the highest CCA rating you can afford, from a reputable manufacturer and also with a reasonable amp-hour capacity rating -- to cover you for those times when you happen to leave your lights on when parked up!  The higher the CCA the better for diesels as the starter needs to work harder against the inherently higher engine compressions.

[collywobble]

Simple guide perhaps would be to buy the one with the highest CCA rating you can afford, from a reputable manufacturer and also with a reasonable amp-hour capacity rating -- to cover you for those times when you happen to leave your lights on when parked up!  The higher the CCA the better for diesels as the starter needs to work harder against the inherently higher engine compressions.

The Varta Silver E44 I bought for my 9-5 2.2TiD has a rating of 70ah and a CCA of 780A.  Was fitted in January 2011, the car is left outside and starts first turn of the key whatever the weather.

[nine-fiver]

With 780CCA I would hope so! That would start a truck.