Fact or fiction about life of batteries in hot areas

mkirsch wrote:
Battery manufacturers will make any excuse they can to shift blame for a mediocre to shoddy product. Too hot. Too cold. Too wet. Too dry. Too much use. Too little use. In the end you always end up paying for the new battery.

And tire dealers too. Sub "tire" for "battery" in your statements above.....and add potholes. NO tire or battery ever failed due to defective parts or workmanship.

I used to grimace when a customer brought back one of my "piece-of-junk" RV alternators, chewed my ass for 20-minutes, then stomped out cursing to return in a few hours.

I'd pull the alternator apart and find ALL THREE TATTLETALE diodes blown, and the only thing on the face of the earth that would blow those 1000 PIV diodes is REVERSED POLARITY. About one in ten wouldn't admit it. They walked away poorer for their stupidity. The others got their screwups fixed for parts cost alone. "But I only touched the cable for a second and stopped when I saw a spark".

This is not a one-way street. The problem was so serious with batteries I made a good income ferreting out the truth and then doing my best to correct it.

The phrase "Screw Up A Steel Ball With A Feather Duster" has a lot of merit to it. Finding and correcting the actual problem works miracles.

Sam Spade wrote:
Will batteries fail sooner if exposed to high temperatures?

I thought about it for awhile - then realized how much it didn't make sense.

If reallly true, then a question is begged: Since underhood air temperatures are always "high" around a battery under the hood whenever a vehicle is driven ... does this mean that the more you drive your vehicle the quicker it's battery will die??

I think not. I think the key to long battery life is keep them fully charged (without bubbling away electrolyte) as much as possible. Sometimes personal vehicle batteries get let go too long without a maintenance charger on them or if whenever they are driven ... they may not be driven long enough to replenish the charge that was drained when the engine was started or driven long enough to replenish lost charge from sitting too long between drives.

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
I do not know of a battery under the hood of a motor vehicle that is not mistreated. Try as they might, charging system controls can and do not apply proper correct voltage for minus temperatures, short trips, lights, heater, you name it. To verify this yourself look at a corrected temperature chart, then imagine a slow-engine-speed with the alternator output barely able to maintain amperage then the voltage is in the fourteens. For -20F temps? Gimme a break. Going home and connecting the car to a battery maintainer that supports CORRECT float voltages would enhance battery lifespan multi-fold. You WILL notice that cars and trucks in frigid area that are started then ALWAYS driven long distances will have much longer battery life in frigid climes.

Hot, low and high Ph agents are infinitely more reactive than cold media. This is normal and expected behavior in chemistry. Chill battery acid in a freezer to 0F, drop a spoonfull of raw hamburger in it wait 2 hours and examine. Heat the same acid to 200F in a PYREX vessel and do the same with the hamburger. Oooooo! Now imagine the hamburger as being your eyeball.

Batteries in elevated temperature climes do not operate at ambient temperatures. I have seen 190F underhood (battery lead) temperature in summer desert areas. What "charging" voltage is correct for a flooded lead acid battery at 190F.? This temp is so severe it cannot be touched with a finger without screaming OUCH!

Battery OEM scream 120F is the absolute maximum temperature limit for even the most infinitesimal of charging. With the battery in the trunk or inside a hatch at 120F how much charging "should" it see? How about if it's discharged and needs to be charged?

These are quandaries that have no practical answer. To put it bluntly, the battery takes it in the shorts. Surplus acid batteries like golf car and industrial tolerate elevated temperatures better because they have thicker plates to absorb ablation, and more surface area on their case to dissipate heat.

Go ahead. Access those temperature charts. Compare the date versus what your charging system insists on doing...

Then wince...

I think one reason my Mercedes batteries last so long is that they are NOT under the hood in the engine compartment. The sedan has the battery under the back seat, the roadster in the trunk. Way less heat than sitting underhood all the time.

Next is the battery itself. flooded cell, but looking at the details it has different composition of other metals than the typical lead acid. Don't recall which, but looking up, adds cost but extends life.

The sedan I replaced the battery after something like 13 years, not because it was giving trouble, but because DW was driving to work long distance every day and decided with winter coming didn't want her to have a battery go bad. And in the winter we do lots of stop and go and use the "rest" function to keep the heat in the car when shopping. runs an electric water pump and fan to circulate the coolant through the heater core to keep the car at a set temp for up to 1/2 hour. Still the batteries last a long time, same treatment with the roadster.

The first underseat batteries attempted Ca/Ca construction which failed miserably. The Bosch philosophy included flat compensated voltage regulators which were set at 13.8 That value in conjunction with Ca Ca construction resulted in premature battery failure due to significant undercharging, in temperatures <10c

So the change was made to hybrid construction. This is why German OEM batteries were cruelly expensive in the sixties and seventies. The Ca/Sb battery proved to be better but few customers selected OEM as their battery replacement brand. Those were the days of 5% antimony automobile batteries. Bosch refused to budge on their corporate mandate of 13.8 volt regulation. Group 42 and 53 Bosch batteries remained Ca/Sb for many years. VRB batteries remained out of production until Delco brought out the semi-sealed Ca/Ca battery in the seventies. Now that VRB are common, the issue of housing batteries outside of engine compartments is common. Of Note are the Cadillac Allende remote batteries of the 1980's housed in the vehicle trunk, which incorporated the 1116412 Delco Voltage regulator in the CS144 alternator. The sense line to the regulator was controlled by a thermistor attached to the battery. The sense lead therefore ran from the vehicle trunk to the alternator voltage regulator. This system has been long obsoleted.

Here is a seldom discussed area of interest for warm climate operation


http://www.matrixenergy.ca/batteries/rolls-water-miser-caps.html

pnichols wrote:
Since underhood air temperatures are always "high" around a battery under the hood whenever a vehicle is driven ... does this mean that the more you drive your vehicle the quicker it's (sic) battery will die??

I'm not sure if underhood temps while running are significantly hotter than a car exposed to baking sun sitting all day.

And I'm thinking that cars probably sit more than they're driven.

pnichols wrote:

I think not.

You can think whatever you want but heat IS a factor, or can be.

If you really care try a search or two on "Batteries + heat".

When a vehicle is moving, there is a lot of air flowing around under the hood.

I've seen threads on auto enthusiast forums on how long batteries should be expected to last. Pretty much invariably, those writing from warm southern climates report significantly lower life than those from cool northern climates, often by a substantial margin (3-4 years vs 6-7 years, for instance). While it's only anecdotal evidence, eventually there are enough and consistent anecdotes that one suspects an actual measurable trend exists.

All other things being equal, the battery under the hood of the car being driven in 90° weather will be quite a bit warmer than one in a car being driven in 30° weather, even if both will be well above the outside ambient temperatures.

It's quite possible that a vehicle driven a lot would suffer battery failure more quickly than one driven a moderate (but consistent) amount. I don't know how the life of taxi batteries compares to that of private automobiles, say. Regardless, I suspect that in the grand scheme of operating a taxi, the battery line item would be absolutely negligible.

Sam Spade wrote:

mkirsch wrote:
Battery manufacturers will make any excuse they can to shift blame for a mediocre to shoddy product. Too hot. Too cold. Too wet. Too dry. Too much use. Too little use. In the end you always end up paying for the new battery.

And tire dealers too. Sub "tire" for "battery" in your statements above.....and add potholes.
NO tire or battery ever failed due to defective parts or workmanship.

Not true,
I bought chinese made deep cycle AGM and it failed in about two months,,two of its cells were broken..

I had original Delco last 8 years in my 85 truck..canada weather mind you summers get quite hot here in Ontario too..

I think too many electronics and computer gizmos kill batteries now faster due to many loads and continous discharging