Car Battery Care and Maintenance Tips - Must Know

Are you looking for great tips for your car battery maintenance? You have been looking for long but couldn't find definite tips so that you can maintain your car battery easily? Then set all your woes aside because in this article we are going to discuss some of the must know car battery care and maintenance tips. It is not something of a rocket science but some fundamental aspects need to be cleared. Let us begin with the article.
But before you begin, remember to have your safety glasses!

• Check The State Of Charge

The first thing to check on your car battery is the state of its charge. To check the charge, you got to have an instrument specifically made to check the battery charge on the automotive vehicle. With your instrument, check the level of charge on a car battery.

To do this, you first need to set the voltage on your instrument at 20 volts. Then, you need to position the device on the positive and negative side of the battery and check the voltage. The fully charged car battery would show a voltage of 12.6 volts. If it is winter time, then your car battery might show the voltage of 12.5 or 12.4. You do not need to worry about this because it is quite normal. If this is the case, then your car battery is in good shape.

• Clean the battery

However, to make sure that your car battery service for a longer duration and will continue to serve the purpose well. You need to make sure that your car battery is maintained according to the standards required.
First of all, you need to make sure that there is not too much of dirt on your car battery. Over the period of time, the dust on your car battery will become conductive and they will drain your battery faster than the normal drain of charge. When you connect your equipment’s wires on the positive side of the battery and the other on the surface of the battery you will see some voltage indicating the loss of charge. This can be from anywhere zero volts to as high as 6 volts. If the voltage is there on the battery cap and you are losing the charge of the battery, then it is time to clean the surface of the battery.
To remove the car battery, remember to first remove the negative wire because that is the one which creates sparks if not handled carefully. Once you remove the cables you can remove the battery from the car and take it out. Remember that batteries are heavy and if there is no strap on the battery then you need to have some sort of equipment to get it off from the car.
To clean the outer casing of your battery, all you need is baking soda and some water. There are other products out in the market to clean your battery and if you want you can purchase those. Use cloth, baking soda and water to clean the upper cap and the surface of the battery so that there is no dust and it is clean.

To further make sure that the battery is clean you can use some of the market products and use it diligently on your battery case. If you are using some particular product from the market, then they might change the color to blue if there is any sort of leakage so you should be mindful of this aspect also. To make sure that there is no surface drain of voltage you can check with your equipment again and the voltage should show 0 volts.

• Check the level of electrolyte

Most of the modern car batteries are sealed and you do not have the access to the electrolytes inside a battery. If the caps of your battery is removable then you can remove the caps to see whether the level of the electrolyte has gone down. Remember to where you are safety glasses and safety gloves all the time when you doing this.

Remove the cap of your battery and look down carefully on the holes to check the level of the electrolytes. There are acid and water inside electrolytes and in the hotter climate, the water level goes down, however, the acid level stays the same.
If this is the case, then you can refill the level of water with some distilled water. When you put the water into the electrolytes you need to be careful not to do with haphazardly. Instead, you should be doing it in a very controlled manner.
Use suction device and manually suck in the water and carefully pour it down to individual electrolyte with extreme care. At last, you can also check individual gravity level of each electrolyte with the help of hydrometer. The measurement that you should be looking for is 1.27. Anything which is less than that is not a good indication. At last put the caps back onto the battery.

• Load test of battery

Next, you can do a load test of your battery. Up to this point, if there is no issue with the battery then your battery doesn't need any load test but to just make it sure, you can purchase an inexpensive load tester from the market.

When you test with your load tester, the voltage on the surface of the battery should be at least 9.6 volts. Anything below this is not a good indication. Every time you load test your battery it should be 9.6 volts and above. Make sure that you do not overdo this and limit the testing time to about 10 seconds only.

• Charging the battery

Now if you need to charge a battery what should you do? So if your testing shows that your battery needs charging then make sure that it charges your battery slowly and not in a jiffy. Charge your battery over a long duration of time on the lower amperage. When you charge your battery make sure that it is disconnected from your vehicle. This will make sure that the electronics of your vehicle are safe.

• Cross-check

Finally, before putting your battery back into the car, make sure that the terminals of the battery are absolutely clean. You can purchase from the market an inexpensive wire cleaner to clean the terminals easily.
Now is the time to put the battery back into the car. When you do this make sure that the battery holds on to the compartment pretty tight. If your battery is not properly placed, then when your car moves the battery will bounce and it will cause damage. Before putting down the terminals wires make sure that you clean them with wire cleaner. Remember the ground wire goes last.
Wanda Greaves writes for BatteryChargersExpert.com – a great website dedicated to help people to find, use and do anything with their batteries, chargers or related electricity devices. Check out her latest article about choosing the best car battery charger.