How long should my battery last

[Oriskany]

My 3.0 Sovereign has a Jaguar battery with the date code 15/13 - 2013. Today I went out to record the diagnostic readings from my message centre by holding in the trip stalk and switching to position II and then recording what was displayed. There were over two pages to record and I sat there for about ten minutes in II, without paying much attention to the fact that the automatic lights were on and the fan running. I finished and switched off and then on to start the engine - and it would not! Just a click of the solenoid and the dash resetting. I swapped the battery for a similar one that I had handy and it started OK but I wonder whether the original one is on the way out. I have measured the voltage ofthe original battery and it is 12.63v. On the charger it is charging at 0.75A. Would have expected more. I removed the cell covers and the electrolyte is up to level and nothing looks dirty or warped - actually the cells looked really clean under the torch! Any ideas or experiences?

[JOE-DOT-COM]

Hi

battery on a petrol car should last at least 5 years

but batteries usually fail early due to other faults, such as poor charging, high standby drain currents/faults and incorrectly wired accessories/add ons

on a diesel its a different story, but I've known car parts places to give 4 year warranty on a petrol car battery and then only 12 months warranty on a diesel, for the exact same battery

if you use a smart charger like say a CTEK or similar, I recently replaced the battery on my mitsubishi, a Bosch asia silver, that lasted just over 11 years,  so a smart charger really can extend the life of a car battery

I use a CTEK on my Jaguar also and you can tell the difference, especially as there so many electronic now a days, that really are voltage sensitive, for some reason the s-type's and x-type, both share a lot of accessories and modules, seem especially sensitive to voltage drop and cause lots of errors when the battery gets low

AGM batteries now, seem to be a lot better, they hold there charge much better than a lead acid or a sealed for life type.

cheers

Joe

 

[Oriskany]

14 hours ago, JOE-DOT-COM said:

Hi

battery on a petrol car should last at least 5 years

but batteries usually fail early due to other faults, such as poor charging, high standby drain currents/faults and incorrectly wired accessories/add ons

on a diesel its a different story, but I've known car parts places to give 4 year warranty on a petrol car battery and then only 12 months warranty on a diesel, for the exact same battery

if you use a smart charger like say a CTEK or similar, I recently replaced the battery on my mitsubishi, a Bosch asia silver, that lasted just over 11 years,  so a smart charger really can extend the life of a car battery

I use a CTEK on my Jaguar also and you can tell the difference, especially as there so many electronic now a days, that really are voltage sensitive, for some reason the s-type's and x-type, both share a lot of accessories and modules, seem especially sensitive to voltage drop and cause lots of errors when the battery gets low

AGM batteries now, seem to be a lot better, they hold there charge much better than a lead acid or a sealed for life type.

cheers

Joe

 

Thanks Joe. I've decided that it's already curtains for the battery that I removed as I don't trust it any more. When I went through the dash tests it was reading 10.2V after just a couple of minutes with the ignition on. I've replaced it with a new battery of the same size but with 64Ah instead of the original 60Ah and 590A instead of the original 550A of cold cranking current. Funnily enough my car jerked a bit on acceleration up hill between about 30 and 60MPH but now it seems to have stopped doing that and is  frankly like a rocket on rails. You must be right that the electronics don't tolerate a weak battery - and I'm increasingly sure my old battery, though a Jaguar OEM unit, is weak.