A flat car battery is one of the most annoying and frustrating experiences.
There are a many things which can cause the battery in your vehicle to go flat, typically cold weather, battery age, frequent short journeys and no usage. We’re seeing a rise in the sale of car batteries during the UK lock down, but why?
Cold temperatures have an impact on all batteries, if you’ve ever used a camera in colder temperatures you would have noticed that it’s battery life had probably halved. Car batteries are also affected in the winter months, the power cells aren’t as active in cold temperatures. As a battery ages, it’s power degrades, it’s only natural.
A car battery uses a lot of power to get the engine started, once started the engine recharges the battery using an alternator. The faster the engine spins the more power is pumped back into the battery. If you’re starting your car just to pop to the local shops and back in the rain, the engine won’t be running long enough to charge it back to the level it was at before you left the house. Especially, with the lights on, wipers waving, wind screen blowers on, phone on charge with the stereo blasting, they all use power from the battery.
Finally, no use of the car, by this we mean, leaving a car stood up for some time. For example, if a pandemic induced lock down stopped you from driving your car anywhere. We’ve recently heard from a business who have 16 delivery vehicles, all Citroen Berlingo’s and all less than 2 years old (2018/2019). The business closed for a month, on return 15 out of the 16 vehicles would not start, they all had flat batteries. Considering they were stop-start engines fitted with AGM (Absorbent Glass Mat) batteries, it was a costly repair.
In our lock down scenario, a flat battery isn’t only confined to old vehicles and batteries, as you’ve read newer vehicles are having issues. Modern cars have hundreds of sensors, complex monitoring, accessibility and security functions that are all powered by the battery, it’ll need a boost now and again. The easiest and simplest way to do this is to start your engine, leave it run and give a good few presses on the accelerator (whilst out of gear obviously!). That’ll get the alternator working and pumping power back into the battery.
Too Late?
I’m too late. It’s already flat.
Not a problem, there are a few fixes you could attempt before telephoning your trusty mechanic.
Battery Charging
You’ll see every car inside a new car dealership secretly plugged in to a battery charger underneath, they don’t want the batteries going flat on new cars; nor do they want to have to start the engines everyday to charge the batteries. There are a whole host of battery chargers, some maintain and condition the battery others simply charge a flat battery, we sell a whole range.
However, there can be a point where a battery is too flat to charge, your next option is boosting or jumping.
Jump Starting an Engine
If you’re able to get your engine started, the alternator should be able to charge the battery whilst the engine is running as we’ve mentioned previously. Jumping a engine requires booster cables and a donor car, the idea being, the flat battery will be able to draw power from the stronger battery enough to start the engine. An alternative is to use a Power Pack, these are essentially portable batteries manufactured to simply connect to a flat battery and feed it power. Whilst very confident and a little pricey it’s likely that your mechanic may have one.
If charging or jumping doesn’t get your car going there may be other under lying issues that your mechanic could look into. Either way, even if you manage to recharge or jump start your battery, its life may have been significantly shortened after a discharge – you may want to replace it at some point for a new one. If there’s any doubt, we offer a free battery test on site.