My 12V battery is 6 years old & working fine=Should I replace it before 3000 mile trip?

But no qualified or self respecting wire-biter in the world would ever use it.

 

Ridiculous assertion.

 

You have no idea what my training, experience or qualifications are.
I have been an Electronics Engineering Technician for about 50 years, part of that time at Bell Labs.

 

My Cobalts battery is 10 years old, the Volts is 7

Playing with fire

 

Skibob said: ↑

And get the most expensive one. They are always the best.

Wait, you are challenging the cornerstone of my wife's shopping strategy.....

 

All the debate circles around the the lack of testing of OP's battery. "Working fine" does not replace an objective test. Get something like a Solar BA5, have a battery retailer with similar test, or just consider the age, and replace it.

 

My 12V battery came with the car that I bought 5 years ago. It has a low voltage when it arrived.

It's still functioning by today and that is after driving a 1500 miles round trip and with years of town commutes. Sometimes the security system of the car gets panicked on a low battery, but really no big hassle.

Bottom line is, when you scroll the power window on pure 12V battery and you don't feel it slow, the battery should be good enough for a while. And as previously said, driving long distance will charge your battery better so even you have a dying battery it's not gonna leave you on the road.

If you are still worrying about it, buy yourself a mobile jump starter power bank, which are $30ish. Even if you have a good battery, having one of these for emergency cases will save you time and/or money.

 

Mine is an OTC 3183, so maybe I paid a bit more....
Just sold our blue 2005 this weekend and used it to test the 12v battery prior to the sale.

 

I'd point out that yes, he lives in a cold weather state, and that cold weather season is now ending as warm spring weather arrives. The likelihood of having a problem on this particular springtime trip is low.

Not zero, but much lower now than if he asked 3 to 6 months ago, when winter cold was rolling in or already here. Most batteries fail as that cold winter weather is arriving, or during its depths, but not during the spring warmup.

That said, at six years, there is also no fault or shame in preventatively replacing it now, because it is no longer a spring chicken, and could still die anyway. Or instead bring along a battery charger/tender (and extension cord) for the trip.

 

I hear with ambulances, fire trucks and such, they replace batteries very early, maybe bi-yearly. Not advocating such an early change, but think it illustrates something. Maybe.

 

yeah, if you're on the moon, or anything like it, you don't need battery failure

me? i never have to be anywhere anymore. running this battery into the ground

 

Illustrates the beauty of spending someone else's cash --

 

Many of these vehicles will make rare, short trips. Their batteries will not get long charges like you and I would do on a freeway. Also, if I have a dead battery, I look like an idiot, if they have a dead battery, people die. Both these make the use case for my car and a fire truck very different. I bet the OPs use case more resembles mine.

 

My Prius v battery is over 7 years old. I use a Battery Minder when parked.
I also carry one of these jump packs.

All my cars, including my riding lawn mower, have an EC5 jumper cable connected directly to the battery. I made them by getting extra cables, removing the clamps and attaching really heavy duty copper lugs.

 

If you don't use accessories a lot, the only thing a 12v battery does is power any remote door unlocks or on the handle unlocks and then send a signal to the computer. The traction battery powers up the ICE. That is why the battery is smaller than in an ICE car. So I can't see winter as significantly more stressful on the 12v in a hybrid than warmer weather. In hot weather you are possibly running the A/C blower while driving more than in winter.

Having said that, there are many situations where weather or dear ones are involved that I depend on the car starting and all system working. I don't take chances on wiper blades, batteries or tires.

 

Simple answer...yes. As in my signature...fix it before it breaks.

 

It illustrates a different cost-benefit tradeoff.

When a fire truck or ambulance is delayed by a dead battery, property damage increases, and occasionally, someone dies. The costs of failure are very high, so it pays of replace these components very early on their age/failure-rate curve.

I'm a retiree. When my battery fails, I just lose the first hour of a ski day. In contrast, replacing batteries every two years instead of waiting for my typical failures at 6-8 years, costs me several ski lift passes. So by pushing my batteries much longer towards near certain failure (and occasionally a bit too far), I actually get more ski time.

Other folk's own personal cost-benefit balance points will be different.

 

I've got a similar quick-connect on ours, albeit under the hood, at the fuse box. @NutzAboutBolts has a video (pinned in the 3rd gen maintenance forum) on how to remove the cover over the 12 volt cable connection. Any "off day", a day the car won't be used, I connect a smart charger, and leave it on till next use of the car.

And yeah, for those emergency vehicles, maybe hooking up chargers, coupled with monitoring, would be more ecological than just willy-nilly replacement so soon.

 

Vail ski lift ticket cost $200 this year. Preemptively replacing the battery will save time, money and gobs of angst.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

There is no good reason to pay $200 per day for Vail, when a $699 Epic Local Pass gets you ten (holiday-restricted) days there / Beaver Creek / Whistler-Blackcomb, plus plenty more restricted days at other resorts (Heavenly, Kirkwood, Northstar, Park City, Sun Valley, Snowbasin, etc.), plus completely unrestricted season skiing at plenty more (Breck, Keystone, Crested Butte, Stevens, etc.)

Though this season we used an Ikon pass, skiing Brighton, Deer Valley, Steamboat, Winter Park, Copper, Aspen-Snowmass, and Big Sky for just $37/day for lift tix. (For the unfamiliar, walk-up prices for most of those days were $159-179, only Brighton had a two-digit price.) And it would have been even cheaper if we hadn't been aced out of Jackson Hole (roads closed by repeated heavy powder dumps), Lake Louise, and Sunshine Village (schedule conflicts), or had half my winter blocked out for elder care duty. Still may pick up some additional days around Tahoe and Mammoth.

In fact, most big ski resorts don't intend for much of anyone to pay the walk-up ticket booth price anymore. Destination resorts even plan for less than 10% actually doing so. The great majority of skiers use some sort of bundle or package price or discount.

Whether or not preemptively replacing the battery saves you money, depends on your mechanical, electrical, and diagnositic skills, and how much of a disruption a dead battery is to you. And some shear luck. For some people, a dead battery is nearly the end of the universe, or at least losing a whole day, worth avoiding even at high early replacement cost. For others, it is just a brief delay, well worth saving one or two whole battery replacements.

Angst is in the mind of the beholder.

Your choice, different people will have different tradeoff points. I'll let the people who actually pay $200/day for Vail lift passes, pay for needlessly-frequent battery changes too.