Auto Care Facts About Your Battery for Reno and Sparks Drivers:
Here’s an interesting auto care statistic for our Reno and Sparks, NV, drivers: Only 30 percent of car batteries make it to 48 months. And the life expectancy varies by where you live. It ranges from 51 months in extremely chilly areas to just 30 months in extremely hot climates.
Why is that? It turns out that it’s our modern cars with all their electronic accessories that are to blame. Things like, GPS, DVDs, and entertainment computers are keeping vehicle batteries from maintaining a full charge. The longer a battery goes with a low charge, the sooner it’ll die.
Keeping Your Battery Charged
It’s clear that you Reno and Sparks drivers need to recharge your batteries. An alternator’s job is to charge the battery. Consequently, The dilemma comes when the car’s requirement for electricity is high, and we are driving in stop and go situations or short trips around Reno and Sparks. In these conditions, the alternator just can’t meet the demand.
The result is a battery that doesn’t live up to it’s advertised shelf life. So what can Reno and Sparks drivers do to improve this situation?
Keeping the battery as close to full charge as possible is the solution. That can be hard because sitting for just 24 hours in blistering weather between charges can be too long. When the weather’s cold in Reno and Sparks, sitting for several days will cause discharge.
Driving Conditions Affect Your Battery
So some highway driving around NV will help keep a full charge if the battery has not been profoundly exhausted. Vehicle batteries are not meant to be run down low, or deep cycled, as it’s called. So using your headlights or other electronic accessories when the car is off can deeply drain your battery. Using the alternator to recharge from a deeply depleted state is also very dangerous to your battery because it charges too fast. In fact, on average, your battery would only last for ten recharges like that.
Finally, if you do discover yourself with a dead battery or very low battery, use a good quality battery charger to bring the battery up to full charge slowly. Follow the instructions on the charger or talk to your friendly and knowledgeable service advisor at Waynes Automotive Center.