You can buy the best battery on the market, and it’s going to wear out eventually. Just like the battery in your cell phone or laptop, a car battery can undergo only so many charge/discharge cycles before it won’t hold a charge anymore and reaches the end of its service life. Heavy amp loads or extremes of heat and cold can compromise battery life even more. Worse yet, often you’ll have little warning, until the day when you turn the key and hear the engine crank too slowly to start – the sure sign of a dead car battery.
There are things that you can do, though, to optimize the life of your car battery, or at least to keep you out of a tight spot involving a dead car battery.
There are a few different car battery maintainer products available, and one of our favorites is
The Green Knob. A twist of the Green Knob effectively disconnects your battery without having to remove a cable, heading off theft and preventing battery drain. Your car’s electronics (radio presets, engine control computer, car alarm, etc) all need a small amount of current draw. The Green Knob is available in a fused version, with a fused bypass wire allowing low-amperage draw to continue, but it also is set to blow the fuse in case a thief ever tries to start the car.
If you’ve got a car that’s a seasonal driver, occasional driver or project car, you can keep the battery charged with one of the several
car battery chargers that we stock. Inexpensive and reliable, car battery chargers are designed for either a slow, deep charge or a quick bump to bring a dead car battery to life long enough to turn the engine over. They are also set up with switches to prevent overcharging, a potentially dangerous situation.
A dead car battery is a headache – no doubt about it. But at least there are a few things you can do to even the odds in your favor!
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