[s-cars] Battery not liking the cold weather

[JC]

Just an important reminder since the main point has been missed - most
batteries are made by only a short handful of big manufacturing companies on
each continent. In the US these are Exide and JCI (Johnson Controls) and
then a handful of smaller operations.  This is a clear explanation for why
people have vastly different experiences with the same retail brands.

Fixating on Interstate or DieHard is almost meaningless. Those names are
only retail brands slapped on, they MAKE NO BATTERIES, and they can easily
decide to change source manufacturer, explaining why some people get stellar
Interstates and some might suck (and why a run of Interstates suddenly
sucked - they'd likely just changed supplier contracts). That also explains
why in reverse some guys buy cheap Autozone or Wal-Mart batteries and have
fantastic performance - they are actually excellent batteries just with
different plastic stickers on them.

In general JCI OEM'd batteries seem to have been among the better ones (and
Optima is one of their brands), but even then they've bought up competitors
like Delphi that had a pretty crappy reputation so certain JCI models might
not come from the 'good' factories.  Here's a good ref that only shows how
complicated and confusing this stuff is...
http://www.jgdarden.com/batteryfaq/batbrand.htm

At the very least, if you can find the manufacturer code on your existing
great or shitty battery, you should be able to look that up and then ensure
you do or don't go that route again...

Personally I've had great luck with MallWart EverStarts, DieHards, and
Interstates, and best I can figure, the majority of them were JCI made...
Again, though, with JCI selling Delphi batteries, that's not even a reliable
indicator anymore...

JC

---- current ----
1995.5 S6 Avant
---- past lives ----
2006 A4 2.0TQA
1998 A6Q 2.8 PES G2
1989 200TQA SJM
1990 CQ
1997 A4 1.8TQ Wett
1987 4kCSQ

John J. Cunningham
jc at j2c3.com
US Mobile +1 (617) 750-5025
Main / Global +1 (978) 633-3510
China Mobile: +86 (0) 136 6080 9560


>
> John Cody Forbes wrote:
> > Likewise. At the shop I used to work for (an Interstate dealer) we
> > nearly told Interstate to go "F" themselves. We had something more


__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature
database 3769 (20090115) __________

The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

http://www.eset.com