Battery Life

[ryanjl]

I'm into the Interestate plan now, as I imagine the LR4 will **** a battery before it runs out of warranty, but if I was shopping fresh I'd see if this would work:

https://www.amazon.com/Odyssey-Batt...gateway&sprefix=group+49,aps,152&sr=8-1-fkmr1

 

[NeilP]

Not a good idea to have left it past four years . In cars with small ( and cheap ) batteries , I ditched them ever 36 months regardless of their cranking performance . Even large batteries with 850 CCA are well under USD150 these days .

 

[cperez]

I'm into the Interestate plan now, as I imagine the LR4 will **** a battery before it runs out of warranty, but if I was shopping fresh I'd see if this would work:

Damn, Ryan, I wish I had had the time to wait till Tuesday for this. Umberto also recommended the Odyssey way back in this thread as I'm sure you're aware. I did a quick search for Odyssey and Interstate batteries around here and finally opted for a Duracell Ultra Platinum (long story on my timing issues). I was able to go pick it up in a 90-minute round trip but at least I had it in hand and could deal with this on a weekend versus a busy week day. It slid right in and fired up without any further drama. The biggest hassle was resetting the date from Jan 1, 2232. Some Solihull programmer must've been feeling like a real jokester when he put that upper limit on the date range for this vehicle.

I would have gladly paid $50 more for the Odyssey if I had been able to find one today. It is now on the "LR4" Amazon wishlist that I keep.

Not a good idea to have left it past four years .

You're right and that's a good rule of thumb. I bought this as a preowned about 20 months ago. It was still under factory warranty so I had it at the dealership a couple of times to wring the very last drops out of that coverage. I specifically had them test the battery. It tested out fine so I didn't have any grounds to demand a new one at that time. I had zero signals that the battery was fading and I don't have any special use case that would have put extra burden on the battery.

I had plans to drive out to Annapolis, MD, this morning which is about 45 minutes away. Fortunately, the battery crapped out right in my garage as I was trying to leave, so the hassle was limited to scrapping my plans and using my wife's car to go fetch the new one. I told her I could either be ****** that my plans had been derailed, or grateful that it happened at home. I chose option B. I log all of my services so I'll set a reminder based on my install date. If destiny smiles on me I'll get a new battery when this guy turns 9 yrs old.

 

[Robuk]

Before you trash the battery charge it with Ctech or similar and disconnect the sensor on the neg clamp of the starter battery, the alternator will now be in a continuous charging regime of between 13.8 to 14.2 volts, this will keep the battery fully charged.
Your vehicle will run as normal other than no smart charging and no stop/start.

I have been running my Merc for over a year with this sensor disconnected, it has also been disconnected on my Porsche, should work on Land rovers. I did it to get rid of stop/start.

The Merc is C-Class Coupe CGI petrol reg December 2011 and still has original battery which starts car first swing.

 

[ryanjl]

I bought my 2012 LR4 used just about 2 years ago. Already in it was an Interstate battery in the standard H7 size. This past weekend while visiting family, the battery gave up the ghost. The battery was dated April 2015, so Interstate gave me a 45% discount on a new one. I would have preferred a "Group 49"-sized battery, but the warranty only provided a discount on the same model.

As luck (or misfortune) would have it, this morning we discovered that the battery in my wife's Volvo had shot craps as well. Her Volvo also takes an H7 battery. So today, I went and bought a Group 49 battery to put in the LR4, and the H7 battery will move from the LR4 to the Volvo.

I'll try not to tell my wife this as she'll think I planned the whole damn thing.

Well, got into my car after work and got the classic "military time" warning sign on my radio. Looked back at this thread and--sure enough--it's been about exactly 3 years since I bought this battery.

The good news is Interstate warranties their batteries. The bad news is it looks like they've gotten crappier over time.

My warranty would give me a 45% discount on a like-model, but the like-models look to have gone downhill, and they aren't offering the same warranty on new ones that they did in late 2017.

https://www.interstatebatteries.com/support/warranty

The Megatron Plus H8 battery is also considerably cheaper than it once was, which I don't take as a good sign:

https://www.interstatebatteries.com...ne=auto&subcategoryKey=&ignorecategoryid=true

I'd get 45% off of that, which amounts to about $80. Given they aren't warrantying that battery for as long, my guess is I don't want it.

Probably time to move on to Odyssey.

 

[ktm525]

Energizer H8 AGM through Costco FTW.