My car sometimes doesn’t get driven for a week at a time, between that and winter cold I am having constant issues with it dying and needing to be trickle charged. My engine also seems to want a lot of juice for it to turnover.
Would an AGM battery last longer between charges? Would it perform better in the cold? Is there any better solution than just making sure some regularly drives it a few times a week?
Edit: It seems Costco lists an AGM for my car cheaper than a lot of regular batteries, so it seems like I will find out either way… But I am still curious if people think this will solve my charging problems.
I have a battery disconnect on my truck because I rarely drive it and it would discharge the batteries (it didn’t discharge the near as fast batteries until I put the trailer brake controller in so I know part of the cause). A trickle charger will help, but they have a tendency to declare a fault after a few days and stop charging: leaving you with a dead battery anyway. Still a trickle charger is a good idea as batteries don’t like being discharged, just remember to check on it every few days. It is possible the draw is larger than the trickle charger can provide and that is why it doesn’t work - I wouldn’t know.
I have a JNC660 jump starter battery pack which I keep warm in the house. Others tell me this is the way to go (I just bought it so I can’t say how it works). Some li-ion battery packs have a jump starter function - I have mixed results with them (It worked for me once, the next time I got a good crank but it cut out before the engine started).
The battery disconnect might actually be a decent idea for me. The vehicle gets driven almost every day one week, then possibly not at all for a week or two due to my wife and I varying schedules and work from home and the fact we share both vehicles and use them for different things.
How many CCA is the truck battery and what’s the engine size out of curiosity?
I have dual 800 CCA batteries (which my mechanic just measured at 680 each). The engine is a 7.3 liter diesel though (best engine Ford ever had according to many), and it needs a lot of power to turn over cold. I drove it about 2000 miles last year - I bike most places but sometimes I need to drive and a few of those trips need a truck.