Dealer Batteries

T

The Sound Guy

Pursuit Driver
<Rant>

Ok, battery died on our Chevy in on Sept 16th, 2018 on Sunday night before I headed out of town for a week at 5:00 am.

We get it home with a jump, but my wife needs her car that week, so arrange for my FIL to come over, jump her, and follow her to the dealer. I figured I'd let them do some overdue maintenance too.

$139.95 for a battery (in 2018) and $20 to install it.

Snap to present day:

My wife mentions yesterday her car seems to not want to start.

Yep, the battery is only showing 10V, shorted cell. At exactly 3 years old.

Had one OEM battery die at 13 months in our Dodge van.

Dealer Batteries suck.

</Rant>

Going to Advance as soon as I can get off work.
 
Delco batteries are usually pretty good.

I wonder about quality of auto parts these days. One of the youtube channels I watch has done several segments on the poor quality in the industry.
 
Not exactly the same thing but be thankful it isn't a Tesla. A YouTuber I watch bought a used Tesla that was showing a battery fault and wouldn't charge more than 10%. Tesla wanted $22,000 to replace all the batteries. He got an unofficial Tesla shop to do it for around $7,000. Going green is expensive!
 
Batteries are expensive now, we just bought two for a boat and one for the Queen's car. about $159 for a cheap one.
 
Wal-Mart has great prices and great warranties. I think they are using weak lead amalgam in the plates these days as vibrations, like rough roads, takes a toll on these new batteries.
 
Back in the mid-70's, one of my first jobs out of college was at a battery manufacturing plant in Oklahoma City. Remember Prestolite batteries? Neither does anyone else. But, back then it was a big name in the automotive world. Well, I was employed as assistant controller at a plant that made car and truck batteries. I became good friends with one of the guys in the QC/testing department. He hand built me batteries for my personal cars. As employees, we could buy a car battery each month at cost, which at that time was less than half of retail cost. My car batteries lasted for much longer than the expected 3 -5 years. In fact, I never replaced any of my hand built batteries. They were good for as long as I owned each car I put them in. I'll bet that 1972 MG Midget I used to have is still tooling around with my hand built battery.
 
$179, they didn't have a silver in stock, so I had to go for the Gold Diehard.

We hope to sell/trade the car whenever dealer stock starts recovering, so I hate putting too much into it, but you do what you gotta do.
 
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