Do you use Battery Chargers?

Does anyone here use one? Are they worth it or is it better to just buy a new battery?

I've got an Optima YellowTop battery. I can't remember exactly, but I think I have been using it for 2 years or so now. Winter has brought some pretty cold temps to Texas and on some days I've noticed that I have trouble starting up my car. Switching to ACC power before turning on the car, the Cobb AP reports battery voltage at like 11.5 or 11.6 volts. Based on my research online, that number means my car battery is fully discharged. Before going to buy another battery, should I invest in a battery charger?

 

I have a harbor freight battery tender. works just fine for my car that is in storage all winter. but if you drive you car every day (or close to), you shouldn't need one, especially in Texas "cold". Only 2 years would be shitty, but not unheard of for a battery to go bad. My jeep's battery just went bad after a year because I dont use the car much.

If you car sits for days at a time, I would say yeah, go pick up a tender. If you drive every day, I would say your battery is on the way out.

 

Check your car for a rogue battery drain before you go investing in a charger.

 

Yeah 100% this. I should have mentioned that.

 

I stopped driving my car 5 days a week after my wife stopped working, which is pretty much 2nd half of 2016 up to 2017. So I was driving my car maybe 2-3 days every weekdays and it would sit in the garage on the weekends. Texas weather also seems to be tough on batteries, what with the extreme temperature swings from very hot to pretty cold sometimes in a single week. It's just that the concept of battery chargers/tenders seem pretty foreign to me since no one in our family has one. Anyway, I have not even considered looking for a battery drain. I'll look into that, thanks.

 

I use a battery tender jr when the car goes in for the winter. It sits for months not days though.

 

Been doing some reading online about how to check for parasitic battery drain. Looks like all the guides say to start with a fully charged battery. I was tracking my battery voltage yesterday, it went from 11.6 in the morning to 11.9 for my commute home. This morning it was back to 11.6. So for some reason I'm not able to get it back to over 12 volts. So I might need to get some cheapo decent charger to fully charge it up and then check for battery drain.

 

Swing into an autoparts store on the way home and have them top it off. Takes like 10 minutes. I didn't start with a charged battery when I had my draw issues.

To test for draw you'd set your multimeter for DC to 10amps and put the cables between the negative terminal and negative battery wire. Be sure to plug the multimeter cables into the multimeter correctly.

 

I didn't know they could top it off that quick. I'll look into that then, thanks.

 

I have a draw so i put this in. It's awesome. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000...id=1515062071&sr=8-11&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&

When my battery was under my hood all i did was pop it and plug it in if the car was going to sit. If you let that optima batttery sit for a day or 2 on a tender it should be like new again. Short trips doesn't give the battery time to charge. Also do that paracitic load test. IIRC the car should settle down to 30-40 ma after a half hour. Aftermarket alarms add 20ma to that. Anything over 70 ma will kill a battery in a week.

 

Yeah I used to think that batteries will get fully charged up when driving daily and that battery chargers weren't needed. Now I know that they have their place. I also learned that Optima YellowTop batteries get discharged more than regular batteries because they are a deep cycle battery. Good info, thanks.

 

turn on your ignition and check the voltage. then, when you start the car, record if the voltage dips. if it goes below something like 10v then the battery is bad. also, when your car is running, the system should be running around something like 14 volts.

if your AP won't do it, the torque app does.

 

It would dip below 10v in the morning the if battery voltage is like 11.6v before I start up the car. If the voltage is higher than 11.6, it usually stays above 10v when I start the car. The past few days it's been going up. It went up to as high as 12.1 with just daily driving (I drive it 5 days a week now with my new schedule). Though this morning it was back down to 11.7v. I just got my TMIC issue resolved, so I'm going to take care of this next. Thanks for the tips.