My car sometimes doesn’t get driven for a week at a time, between that and winter cold I am having constant issues with it dying and needing to be trickle charged. My engine also seems to want a lot of juice for it to turnover.
Would an AGM battery last longer between charges? Would it perform better in the cold? Is there any better solution than just making sure some regularly drives it a few times a week?
Edit: It seems Costco lists an AGM for my car cheaper than a lot of regular batteries, so it seems like I will find out either way… But I am still curious if people think this will solve my charging problems.
A week is not a very long time to leave a car alone, and 3 batteries in 5 years is a lot.
Did you have the batteries tested, or did you just replace them when they stopped being able to start the car? Could it be a problem with the alternator?
When the battery gets fully discharged it degrades much faster.
I’d be searching for what’s draining the battery and in the meantime I’d add a battery disconnect switch for these periods.
Yeah, I had a lot of the stuff tested about 3 years ago. They seemed to think there was nothing wrong other than me abusing the battery by not driving or charging it enough. I will say it takes a LOT of juice for me to start my car, I probably cheaped out in the past and didn’t get enough CA.
Do you drive mostly short trips? In cold weather it might take 20 minutes of driving before a battery even starts accepting charge (a cold battery charges slower).
Usually 40 mins each way once or twice a week, then maybe 20 mins one day. Then it might not get driven at all for 5-10 days.
I am guessing it discharged too much and then froze, killing it off, since it’s been really cold.