12v battery questions

Time vs distance does start to fall apart, if you've got a near-mothballed car. But if you're doing light but regular use, where months would come up first, I would play by the rules: it's miles or months, whichever comes first, for a crude but reasonable reason: if you're low miles, chances are you're not getting the car warmed up half the time, and/or the effects of protracted downtime are impacting the engine: oil drained off cylinder walls, rust, whatever.

Our Canadian 2010 has oil change interval same as the second generation States, so every spring and fall I slam in fresh oil and filter, and it's only 5000 kms, at the most, these days for us.

Honda has a cool system, called the Maintenance Minder. It apparently monitors multiple factors, not just miles, and counts down in percent to the next maintenance. And when that conter gets down to 15% remaining, it not only says service is needed, but displays an alpha/numeric code as to what services. Keeps the service departments honest..., well honester.

There is one proviso in the Owner's Manual: if the Maint. Minder does not reach zero within a year, do an oil change anyway.

 

What they are selling is lower frequency/inconveience and overall cost with the "high mileage" programs. They utterly fail to consider that there are two and only two ways to rid engine oil of accumulated moisture (which I guarantee you have in spades living in FL); they are: 1) Drive it to full operating temperature EVERY trip, and/or 2) Drain the oil (oil change). The type of oil is completely 100% irrelevant to that factor.

More to the point, the only miles that *really matter* are those operated with oil temperature lower than about 200*F, all those above are essentially "free" when it comes to calculating oil change intervals. Therefore, ultra-low mileage vehicles should actually have their oil changed MORE than "normal" or high mileage vehicles for many technical reasons.

 

with mobil one, i'd poly go every other year. how much life does an '06 have anyway?

 

At the risk of belaboring what's been covered upthread, the point is, you can have a tool as accurate as you please, and if you use that accurate tool to measure the voltage at two places in the car where the voltage is different, you will get different readings. If you didn't, the tool wouldn't be accurate.

The MFD is located at a place in the car's wiring where the voltage (when the converter isn't operating) is about 0.6 volts less than at the battery terminals, and that is the voltage it shows you.

I'm saying "about 0.6 volts" but the true offset is (a) larger in ON than it is in ACC, (b) larger with more electrical loads running, and (c) may be slightly different from one individual car to another. You can learn what it is in your car one time by comparing to a multimeter at the battery, if you feel you need to pin it down more narrowly than "about 0.6". Then just remember it, along with whether you were in ACC or ON at the time, and what electric loads were on. Match the conditions and it's pretty consistent.

-Chap

 

on the plus side, you're doing a little load test at the same time

gen 3 does not have this feature, does it?

 

That confirms the old battery was no longer serviceable.

Yes, it matters! Well, it *might not* matter if the tester does not change the test based on the capacity entered, however most modern "smart testers" very much DO alter the test regimen to ensure the load placed on the battery is comparable with it's rating.

However, it is not too uncommon for new, fresh batteries to test above their rating. The manufacturer's do warrant them, so they benefit by having some "extra" capacity in the battery when new, as long as the warranty savings are not outweighed by the added costs.

 

I've tested our OEM Yuasa battery with my Solar BA5. There nothing on the battery indicated rated CCA. I've searched, and I think it might be 310~325, something like that. I usually enter 325 when testing it. I've kept it around, just out of curiousity, charge it up once in a while. And yeah, it's not uncommon for batteries to better than rated. My current Yellow Top indicates close to 100 than higher (CCA) IIRC. The old Yuasa measures maybe 290~300 still.

It's still odd, the tester indicates the new battery has voltage of 12.43, kinda low.

 

it is relevant if it is a new battery. fully charged should be around 13 with no load, otherwise defective

mine still measures 12.7 after 6 years