VCCA Home Forums GENERAL DISCUSSION What did you do with your vehicle today? New Battery!

Yesterday I installed a new battery in the '37 Master coupe. Boy does it start quickly now!

I had noticed this season that it seemed to crank a little longer but always started. I was thinking there was fuel problem. Until Friday when I was going to the post office! It just cranked over twice and died.

That battery did not owe me anything. I bought it from NAPA in May 2013 for $112. To be truthful I never expected it to go this long.

Saturday evening I bought a BC1 battery from Farm and Fleet for $65. We'll see how long it lasts.

Hah!! Don't expect to get much more than 4 years out of your new battery! Do you know of any replacement object that is made to last beyond the warranty expiration date? Just out of curiosity, why didn't you get the same brand/model of battery from NAPA that you had?

Probably because the one from NAPA 9 years ago was 112, the one from Farm and Fleet was 65 and will probably last as long although I doubt it.

Good question. Why not go back to NAPA?

The NAPA battery would be $123.

The warranty on the NAPA Commercial battery is 6 months free replacement and no pro-rated warranty. The Farm & Fleet battery has a 12 month free replacement warranty and another 12 months pro-rated.

While I know that the NAPA battery is currently made by East Penn I do not know who made the one I bought in 2013. The Farm & Fleet battery is also made by East Penn. By the way there are 3 companies that make the majority of the automotive replacement batteries. Even Interstate does not make batteries.

Plus I wanted a battery this weekend. It was on the shelf at Farm & Fleet. With NAPA I knew it probably would be a “we”ll have it tomorrow” deal when I would call them on Tuesday.

Yup!! That all makes sense!!

My 38 Master battery is now over 6 years old. I have always replaced them at 6 years. The brand and site brand is CarQuest. I usually watch how much current it takes when driving, after recovering from startup. Normal to me is a little less than a needle width. When that doubles it is time to get a new one.

Carquest batteries are made by East Penn.

On a ‘37 the generator charges at a constant amperage that is set by the position of the third brush. There is no voltage or current regulator. So the needle only drops as you add load such as lights or the heater fan. Plus the voltage can go as high as 8 volts.

That is another reason I am surprised the battery lasted so long.

Does your ‘38 have an updated generator and charging system?

My battery just gave up ! Upon looking at the stamped date code on it I was shocked. It read D4. That's April of 2014!!!! Brand name is Dubois sold locally. Needless to say I called them today & ordered a replacement. We will see if the new one will last 8 years. Bet not!

Dick

I worked for a Road Service company for several years, during that time I replaced several batteries that were 10 year old which surprised me as the average life was 5 years.
Tony

I have had wildly different battery life spans on the farm.
Keep in mind here that I am in Canada, but...

We used to buy all of our automotive and small farm engine batteries from GM after they came out with their maintenance free batteries.
The factory battery in my 1976 1/2 ton ran 15 years.
They were even "warranted" for 6 years at one point.
Then that all went to heck and we couldn't get more than 3 years out of anything we bought from them, so we went elsewhere where the price was better and they lasted just as long.
Seems like everyone is selling the same garbage up here now.

Just as a matter of interest,
We bought a 7810 John Deere in the late fall of 1997.
It still has the factory batteries in it, and they worked the same this spring as ever.
Can anyone hear me knocking on wood for the future? :-)
I am chocking this up to the fact that the engine is "pre-electronics" and always starts scary fast. Fires on the first compression it rolls over, so we never actually get a chance to hear how much stamina the batteries have.
Because of this, the depth of cycling is almost nothing, and the batteries have never been run down. Ever.

Anyway, having gone through that period of excellent Delco batteries, I find what they are passing off as batteries now to be disgusting and would like to know what has changed?

In my mind, what has changed is the level of greed in society today. Investors want quarterly reports from publically - traded companies rather than annual ones, and many expect to see their investments increase in double - digit per cents each quarter. The only way a company can do that is a)increase sales, b)lower production costs. So, to do this, companies have resorted to offshore manufacturing (i.e pay a worker $5/day rather than $30/hour), use cheaper materials in the finished product (i.e lower quality) and close down the brick-and-mortar places of business - make the customer buy the product sight - unseen over the internet.

To bring this back on topic, IMHO what you get in your new battery is a product that looks the same as the old battery but will be sadly lacking in quality.

What has changed is many years ago Delco made a great battery but the division was spun off from GM. Delphi sold the battery operations to Johnson Control. Manufacturing was consolidated and the ACDelco battery was sourced from Johnson Control and others such as East Penn on the conventional type batteries (6v).

I still buy the Delco's when I can because I trust the guys selling them. To each his own on batteries.

Dave

Tfe generator and regulator on my 38 are later models . I didn’t want keep the original setup.

Thank you. That makes sense now. If it was the original ‘38 set-up the charging rate was fixed by the third brush position just like in ‘37. The difference is that in 1938 Chevy added a voltage regulator coil.