Walmart W46B24R battery

FYI

Bought a new 12V for the Prius yesterday from Walmart. Model number is W46B24R and it was the only Prius battery on the shelf. A few observations that might be of interest.

First, the battery shown on the website as I write this:

Free Shipping! EverStart Platinum AGM Automotive Battery, Group Size S46B24R, 12 Volt, 410 CCA - Walmart.com

is not what they had in this SoCal store. The one on the web site looks like the OEM battery in my car, black everywhere and with a grid pattern on the ends. The battery in the store is marked "W46B24R", which isn't on their website, and the sticker says "410 CCA Res. Cap 75". It does not have an Ah rating on the battery anywhere. The top is black but the rest is grey, and the sides are smooth, without the grid pattern on the ends. It is still made in Korea. Serial number starts with "HAN". I will post a picture soon.

The website price is $189 "when purchased online" (or not, because the one online is not the same battery), but $195 in the store. Plus of course the various fees and taxes which brought the total to $230.95. $12 back if/when I bring the old OEM one in.

There is a vent hole of the expected size in the expected place in the edge of the black lid near the positive post. However, looking through that hole it appears to dead end against the side of the lower case. Perhaps that is some sort of film there that the vent adapter will penetrate, but it sure looks like a wall of plastic. So at this point I would give 10:1 odds for it not being ventilated.

The weight was 14360 g, nearly 4 kg more than the current weight (10638 g) of the 4 year old one in our Prius. That OEM battery may be dried out, but it isn't 4 kg dried out. There must be a lot more lead in the Walmart model. Also that is 31.7 pounds, but the Walmart website says 26 pounds.

Manufacturing date was 7/25 and voltage was 12.43V.

Spent most of yesterday charging it fully, before the planned 2 hour discharge (to estimate capacity). Started at 13:30 and gave up at 23:30. The BatteryMinder 1500 charger was stuck at 1.5A from 13:30 to 20:30, then it was in absorption phase until I gave up at 23:30. Garage was getting cold, I didn't want to do the initial charge too far from 20C-25C, and it was down to 19.1C.

This morning used the HF "Viking" tester in CCA mode and it read:

SOH 100% SOC 100% CCA 717 13.00V 4.18 mOhm

Since it wasn't really 100% charged, wanted to top it off. The BM1500 has a tendency to do a long 1.5A charge even when it starts on a nearly fully charged battery, so this morning charging was finished with a BatteryTender Jr. That only took 4 minutes at around .7A to get up to 14.38V where it switched to absorption while the current fell rapidly until it hit float mode 16 minutes later.

Tomorrow hopefully I can do a 2 hour 2.5A discharge test to get a rough estimate of the capacity, charge it up again (which should only take around 4 hours with the BM1500) and then into the car it goes. My gut feeling is that this battery is more than 45Ah, more like 50 or 55 Ah. We will see.