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should this battery be ok?

14 years ago

Mother in law owns 9 month (?) old subaru with 2K miles on it. She is ill. The wife tries to drive every few weeks. Last time she left a map light on...for a couple of weeks before I tried to start it...EVERYTHING dead!

Charged batery on charger. Put back in car. On 3rd attempt it turned over. I let the car idle for 10 minutes. It later started without incident and I took it for a drive.

Should the battery be ok or could some sort of permamnt damage have been done?

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Comment (1)

jemdandy
14 years ago
If the battery is fully charged, it should be ok for average use. I can't tell from your post, but I suspect you left the battery not fully charged. Taking it for a drive was a good thing to do for your MIL because you could reset lost settings such as transmission shift timings, etc. However, if it was not driven for enough time, it may not have been fully charged.

Depending on the battery type, it may have lost some cold cranking capacity (CCA). Several years ago, there was a battery on the market that had greater CCA than the average battery, but if it was ever fully discharged, it reverted to the capacity of a standard battery.

A battery that is left in a state of full discharge may begin to coat the plates with sulphates and this diminishes capacity - it all depends on how long it sat discharged.

If the battery is behaving normally, it will probably give good service for a couple of years. The vehicle is only 6 months old so the battery should be relatively new.

What to do if you are uncomfortable with the situation:

Make sure the battery is at a good state of charge either by driving it sufficiently or using a charger. Go to Batteries Plus and have them run a load test. They can tell you if the battery puts out enough current for the battery model.

After the test, make sure the battery gets recharged because the load test takes a lot of charge out of a battery.
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