Although as I write it’s a bright and mild winter’s day outside, no lesser authority than the Daily Express are warning of a six-week sub-zero Arctic cold spell starting in January. Mind you where would the Express be without a weather headline to invent-I-mean-report.
When it does get cold though your car’s battery, the unsung hero of your engine bay, will have to work extra hard to fire the car into life and power the lights, heater and demister which will all be spending more time switched on than normal. The next icy cold morning might be the one when you find out you should have bought a new battery in the summer, or “fixed the roof when the sun is shining” as George Osborne would say.
When you notice the battery struggling to turn the car over, it’s time to get it replaced – before that fateful icy morning or (worse) late shopping trip when you’re marooned in a cold car-park. Breakdown companies reckon batteries are responsible for 1 in every 7 breakdowns they’re called to, that’s a million call-outs per year. Considering car batteries generally only cost £60-ish and take minutes to fit, that’s a lot of time and stress expended on a very preventable problem.
Car batteries are really only made to last around 5 years so if yours is older it’s worth having it changed – that £60 mentioned above is a lot less than the breakdown company will charge you for one at the roadside too (think more towards £200).
Also if your car is giving intermittent electrical problems, struggling one day and not the next for example, it could be a faulty battery even if it’s not that old – I had one which turned out to have a faulty cell (one of 6 inside the battery), I was able to get a replacement under warranty.
Car batteries are like tyres in that the simplest replacement is a like-for-like; check what’s written on the battery and order one to match. The numbers you need are:
Amp Hours – how long the battery will last if it’s left loaded and not re-charged
Cold Cranking Amps (CCA) – the power the battery has to turn the engine over
Diesels tend to need higher-CCA batteries to get them started, but personally I would go for more CCA than you need anyway as the price difference isn’t that much and I’d rather have that “raw power” there in the cold weather when it’s really needed.
You’ve still got to fit the battery once you’ve got it, sometimes this is relatively easy, sometimes not, either way it’s a messy job leaning into the engine and undoing bolts that don’t want to be undone. If you’re not very vehicle-DIY-oriented then take your car to a trustworthy independent garage and tyre dealer like Triggs Garage in Brentwood who’ll make sure you get a good battery at a good price – all fitted and ready for that Arctic winter.