Is your car battery dead? Need a new car battery? Learn how to test if your car battery is bad and how to recharge a dead car battery. Also learn which car battery is best for your car. In this video I show you how to test your car battery with a multimeter, clean corrosion from the battery terminals, test your alternator, test for a parasitic draw, load test a battery, and replace a car battery properly. I also show the inside of a car battery with a bad cell and I show how batteries work with multiple grids and how they go bad with heat, vibration and corrosion. And finally I show you the main difference between the different grades of battery and which is right for you.
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DieHard Battery: http://bit.ly/DieHard-Batteries-Chris-Fix
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Battery Charger: http://bit.ly/Schumacher-battery-charger
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Due to factors beyond the control of ChrisFix, I cannot guarantee against improper use or unauthorized modifications of this information. ChrisFix assumes no liability for property damage or injury incurred as a result of any of the information contained in this video. Use this information at your own risk. ChrisFix recommends safe practices when working on vehicles and or with tools seen or implied in this video. Due to factors beyond the control of ChrisFix, no information contained in this video shall create any expressed or implied warranty or guarantee of any particular result. Any injury, damage, or loss that may result from improper use of these tools, equipment, or from the information contained in this video is the sole responsibility of the user and not ChrisFix.

Hey guys chris fix here and today, i'm going to show you how to properly, diagnose and replace a bad battery in your car or truck now notice. I say diagnose first because it's very important to figure out why your battery went dead. Is it because the battery itself is bad or do you have another problem in the car causing a draw? So i'm going to show you how to test your alternator, how to test for parasitic draw how to properly clean your terminals to make sure there's a perfect electrical connection. That way, you know if your battery is bad or if it's something else now, if you do have a bad battery, don't worry replacing a battery is super simple.

I know most of you guys could probably do it with your eyes closed, even if you're a pro at replacing batteries, this video will hopefully teach you something new with all the tips and tricks. I have, for example, when you go to buy a battery like in this case. You can see, we have a silver, we have a gold, we have a platinum, there's different tiers of battery, which battery is right for you can you buy the least expensive battery, or do you need to buy the most expensive battery? I'm going to talk about the different tiers and which one is right for you, another cool thing that i did that i really like is: i cut open, an old battery that is bad and never do this at home. The battery acid is not safe, but the acid has been removed and i'm going to teach you how a battery works.

This is going to be really cool to see because you normally don't get to see this and you can see right. There is a bad cell and i'm gon na teach you what causes a battery to go bad from vibrations from heat from discharging it too much that way. With that information, you could prevent that from happening to your battery and then, finally, once we go to replace the battery, i'm going to show you how to do it in a way that doesn't disconnect the 12 volts from your car. So your car's computer doesn't reset the clock.

Doesn't reset you don't lose your radio stations, you don't lose any presets, it's actually a really nifty thing to do that way. You don't lose that 12 volt connection which basically resets your car, and i do want to thank advanced, auto parts very much for supporting the video and sending me out these brand new die hard batteries. That way, i could teach you guys the proper way to replace a battery i'll, be sure to link all these tools and products in the description, so you can easily find them and with that let's go get started. So real quick, i'm going to begin by showing you what happens when we go to start the cars with the flat batteries.

We'll start here with susan, our previously vandalized car. Okay, let's hit the start button and it tries to start it turns over a little bit. Let's try that again and yeah this battery is so weak, it won't start not even close, and this is a pretty new car. So what's the problem? Next up we have the drift sting which unfortunately hasn't been used too much because it's been a cold winter.
So, let's go start her up make sure the car is in neutral clutch in try it again and he could hear it click, so this battery is dead as well. And finally, let me show you what it's like to start my duramax diesel with two batteries. Sometimes she starts up, and sometimes she really struggles now with a diesel turn the key to the run position and wait for that. Yellow, wait, light on the dash to shut off and that's for the glow plugs, try it again and my daily is dead as well.

So all three of these cars barely turn over. They click when you try to start them what's the next step. Well, the next step is to locate the battery in most cars. The battery is located under the hood in the front.

You can see this one right here, but in some cars like this bmw, the battery is actually located in the trunk, usually in the back corner, to help with weight distribution. So we have the battery right there and same thing with the maserati. If we check out the trunk, you could lift up this little access port and you can see the battery is located right there. If you can't find your battery just check your owner's manual it'll, let you know where it is now, once you locate your battery before you grab any tools, there's two quick things that we could test out.

The first thing is to make sure these terminal connectors are nice and tight, give them a wiggle. That's not budging give this a nice wiggle see if it lifts up and that's not budging either. If your connectors move at all make sure you tighten it up, and that could solve your issue even just a little bit of looseness here, could cause the electricity not to flow properly, and that could cause your car not to start. The next thing to look for is to make sure your terminals are clean and corrosion free.

You should see no corrosion on them and they shouldn't look dirty. These look nice and clean. That's exactly what you want if you do see corrosion or dirt, it's important that you clean it. So let me show you how so the dirtiest terminals i could find are on my pickup truck and they're, not really dirty, because they are corroded but they're more dirty, because i go off-roading get mud everywhere, but this is still a good example on how to clean Them so let me show you how to clean the battery terminal, so you have a perfect connection.

First, get your safety glasses on then grab a little bit of warm water and some baking soda and make a little slurry so that we can neutralize any acid. That might be on the post, then just brush down the post in the surrounding area and see that bubbling right. There, that's a little bit of acid being neutralized. If that sat there over time, it could cause corrosion and it could lead to a bad connection and that's why we use the baking soda to clean our posts.

Next loosen up the connection, so we can remove it and tuck it away against the plastic of the battery. Don't let it hit any bare metal now, with all the acid removed around the terminal and it's relatively clean. We want to sand it down to get a fresh surface to get a good connection, so you could use 180 grit sandpaper. You could use one of these abrasive pads or you could use a metal wire brush so brush the terminal to reveal fresh metal and also brush the wire end on the outside, but, more importantly, clean the inside, where it makes contact with the battery beautiful.
So, with the inside of the terminal and cleaned and our terminal cleaned, we have a nice fresh surface, so we have a good electrical connection. One thing that i like to do ever since i got my drift car. This came with the drift car. These little felt terminal protectors, i didn't think anything of them, but they actually work really well to help prevent corrosion and also it makes it really easy to see which side's deposited the battery, which side's the negative, because they're color-coded plus it comes with the silicone that We're gon na need to make it waterproof and corrosion free inexpensive to buy highly suggest it.

It just makes the install that much better and these felt pads have a chemical in them to help neutralize any acid that might come out or vent out. That way, it reduces corrosion. So let's reconnect our wires and be sure to push it all the way down and then tighten it down. So it's snug, but don't over, tighten it and give it a wiggle to make sure it doesn't move.

And the last thing to do is get the packet of silicone grease and get some on the terminal end and coat the entire metal surface. The silicone grease is hydrophobic, so it's going to prevent moisture from getting in there and causing corrosion. It keeps these terminals. Looking great beautiful and that's all there is to cleaning the terminals on your battery.

We did the positive. I did the negative off camera now with both of these clean. The alternator isn't going to work as hard the starter's not going to work as hard. The electrics in your car are going to be a lot happier and your battery's going to be a lot happier.

So, even if your car is running fine, take a quick look at your terminals, make sure they're corrosion free and they look clean. I actually did a survey on instagram asking you to check your terminals and see if they're, dirty or clean and 44 said they were dirty and that's over 190 000 people who answered this. So it's totally worth a quick check to make sure your terminals aren't corroded. All right so we're back at the white car with the dead battery.

We know the terminals are clean, so there's a good electrical connection. Next, let's check the voltage and to do that. Grab your multimeter. If you don't have one, you could find these pretty inexpensive.

They're a great tool to have, especially if you like working on cars, i'll, be sure to leave a link in the description and then you're going to want to set the multimeter to 12 or more dc volts. So we have 12 volts right there and we're good to go now. You can grab your prongs. Red goes to positive black, goes to negative and check it out.
We have 10.5 volts and that number tells us a lot now when you do this test on your car, you want to see about 12.4 to 12.6 volts. That means your battery is fully charged if your battery is lower than 12 volts. Make sure you don't have anything on in the car by accident, and if you don't, it could be a bad alternator. You could have a parasitic draw or the battery itself could be going bad i'll.

Show you how to diagnose that. But this number right here that 10.5 volts, that specific voltage tells me that we probably have a bad cell in the battery. Let me show you why now, this old battery was also 10.5 volts when it was replaced, and it's the perfect example on why a battery goes bad. So i cut it open that way.

I could show you what causes a bad battery and also how a battery works. Now i want to make sure you guys don't cut open a battery at home. These are filled with very strong acid. I already neutralized the acid and i recycled it, but i wouldn't want you guys to get hurt so, instead of cutting open a battery just stick to watching this now you can see this battery has six individual cells.

Each cell creates 2.1 volts of electricity. So the reason why, when i saw 10.5 volts, i immediately thought it's a bad cell is because, if one cell's dead, that's 2.1 volts out of the 12.6, and that leaves you with 10.5 volts. Now, let me show you, inside one cell, we'll take this cell out. So this is what one cell of a battery looks like it's a bunch of grids, there's positive and negative grids in here.

That's what this is right here. This grid actually broke off from vibration, and that's what one grid looks like and behind this grid is another grid, and this grid is in a plastic sleeve. That is very porous, so it allows the electrolyte and the electrons to flow through, but these two grids can't short out if they touch because they're right next to each other, they won't short out they're insulated. Now each of these grids has a paste on it.

You can actually see some of the paste has fallen out due to vibration. That's why vibration damages batteries. This paste helps with the chemical reaction to create the electricity. So the more that falls off the less power your battery gets now the more grids you could fit into a cell, the more cold cranking amps you'll get, and the reason why this cell failed isn't just because one of these grids fell off.

I mean it's not good that one fell off. But if you look here, all of these grids are attached to this main piece of metal with very small, very fragile pieces. And if there's a little bit of corrosion due to heat. Well guess what over time vibrations will just break that all off and then you lose an entire cell.
So that's why vibration and heat are the enemy of a battery. You want to try to avoid it at all costs and that's what ultimately caused this cell to fail and give us 10.5 volts now the last thing to do to verify that the battery is bad is to put it on a charger. Now all we have to do is hit charge and it's going to start charging and now, if this goes to that 12.6 volts that we need, maybe it's not the cell, that's bad! Maybe it just needed to recharge. But if the charger can't charge to that voltage, then we know for sure our battery is toast all right.

So i left it on for a couple of hours and you can see we're almost at 12 volts, that's pretty good, but what happens when we shut the charger watch? This charger is shut and immediately that voltage drops real, quick and that'll end up settling around that 10.5 volts that we were just at so we know for sure now that our cell is bad now, let me show you how to replace this battery. So the first thing i do is, i make sure i go out and get the correct replacement battery. This is important. You want to make sure you get the correct one and to do that, you can check your owner's manual.

It'll. Tell you right in here. You could also look on the original battery the old battery. That's in your car.

What you're looking for on here is the group size right there. It says group h6 and that's the size of your battery. You also want to take a look down here at your cold cranking amps. This is how many amps the battery could supply when it's zero degrees out.

So when it's very cold, you want to make sure you have at least the oem number with your new battery. In this case, it's 600, but you could always go higher the more cold cranking amps. You have the more power you have reserved in your battery. To start your car and also out of simplicity, you could either go to the store or go online input your year.

Make and model and it'll tell you exactly what batteries fit your vehicle and finally, when buying a new battery, there's two common types: now there is your standard flooded battery which has been used forever and then now we have agm batteries absorbed glass mat, which is a Little bit more durable, so they're built more durable to withstand vibrations and higher electrical loads. A lot of cars, especially newer cars today, have tons of sensors. They have that start. Stop technology where, if you come up to a light, the engine shuts off automatically and then, as you press on the gas, the car starts and goes if your car has that it needs an agm battery so check.

If oem requires an agm make sure you put an agm back in and even if your vehicle comes stock oem with a flooded battery, you could always upgrade to an agm battery. If you want it's not necessary, but you can, especially if you're running higher electrical loads from maybe you have off-road lights. Maybe you have a winch. Maybe you have an aftermarket speaker system? It's definitely something to think about.
If you have anything that adds an extra electrical demand and then finally, when you go to buy your battery, you're typically going to have a couple of options. So these are all the same exact battery size group 24. But we have the lower end, the less expensive. All the way up to the higher end, the most expensive and the biggest differences here are warranty and power so which one should you get? It all depends on your car and how you drive.

For example, what i like to do on my daily driver gets the most abuse it gets used. The most i want reliability i'll go with the most expensive battery the highest end with the four year warranty. This is what i'll put in my hummer. This is what i have in my truck, and this is a good option for if you need to save some money or you need a battery, but you might be getting rid of the car, it might not last save your money and go with something like that.

All right so now you know everything you need to know on what battery to get for your vehicle, let's replace it now. This is super easy to do in most vehicles. I have a couple quick tips, the first one being it's very important, always disconnect the negative terminal. First, if you go to disconnect the positive terminal, i'm not going to do it, but pretend i'm on the positive terminal and i hit the wrench bare metal to bare metal.

It's going to bridge that gap and it will spark. But if we hit bare metal the bare metal on the ground, it doesn't matter, it's just like grounding out. So just make sure you disconnect the negative terminal first good, and then we could remove the positive terminal and that's the safest way to do it. And now all batteries are held in so they don't become a projectile in an accident.

This battery is held in right down there, so let's unscrew the tie down, then we could remove it good and with this removed now we could remove the battery, but i did something that you guys shouldn't do and i do this all the time. It's a bad habit. I put my tools on top of the battery and you shouldn't do this, because if the two ends of the tool bridge the gap of the battery, it could cause a spark which could create an explosion or a fire. You could also heat this tool up a lot which could burn you so never put your tools on top of the battery now out with the old, and even though no one will see this, i like to make sure it gets cleaned up so vacuum it up.

Spray it down with some soapy water and wipe it down to make it nice and clean good and now in with the new. Now, let's get the tie down in place and tighten it down until it's snug good and that's not going anywhere. Now we're gon na reconnect the positive side. First get one of the red felt pads on there and don't forget to clean the terminal.
Even though this is pretty clean, then we can slide it all the way on and tighten it down. So it's snug and finally add some silicone grease and work it in there to coat the entire metal surface, and one last thing i like to do this battery came with a cover for the positive terminal, so i always like to put the cover back over it. Even though it's not a perfect fit, it'll still prevent bare metal from touching it and shorting it out now we're going to do the same exact thing to the negative side: tighten it down, so it's snug and coat the terminal with silicone paste like so beautiful. So with that installed, there's one more thing left to do all right moment of truth.

Let's start her up and she starts out with no problem at all and a lot of the new cars have awesome gauges. They'll actually give you there. You go your battery voltage right there, 14.4 volts. That's because the alternator is spinning, giving you the extra juice and that's perfect.

So there you go. That's all there is to replacing a battery it's one of the easiest things to do. If your car battery isn't in an easy location, comment below, let me know the car and the model and i'd like to hear where that battery is, but for most cars, five minute job and you're good to go now. What happens if you don't own a multimeter or you don't know how to test your battery or you just want the convenience of somebody else, testing it well, you could head over to your local, advanced, auto parts and they'll test your battery for free with no obligations To buy anything at all, they have a high end load, tester and that'll.

Let you know for sure if it's bad - and in this case just like we tested this battery, has a bad cell and it won't charge above 10.5 volts. So it needs to be replaced and just to let you know they will come out to the car as well to test the battery in the car. That way, you get an idea of how strong your battery is, so you don't get stranded all right and it's that simple to diagnose and replace a bad battery. But this is just one scenario and in this scenario we did have a specific voltage, which gave us a hint that a cell was bad in the battery.

That 10.5 volts told us to check the battery, and we did find out that the cell was in fact bad, so we're able to easily diagnose it. But it's not always going to be that simple. It's not always going to be that type of problem. A lot of times you're going to go and park your car and then a day later it won't start or a week later it won't start or maybe even two weeks later, you go to start your car and it won't start, and it should start no problem.

If the battery's healthy, if not we're gon na, have to diagnose the problem and to do that, it's really easy. It could be a bad alternator, it could be a parasitic draw or it could be a bad battery. So the first thing we're going to test is the alternator really simple to test. We need to start the car, and in this case the battery voltage is about 11.8 volts, not enough to start the car.
We want to make sure we charge the battery all the way up to 12.6. That way we could start the car and properly test the alternator. So a couple hours later we're all charged up at 12.6 volts. So now we could disconnect the battery charger and, let's go start, the car to test the alternator all right.

So we have about 14.3 14.4 volts, that's perfect! You want to be anywhere between 13.6 and 14.6 volts. That means your alternator is outputting the correct voltage. If it's higher than 14.6 - let's just say it's 15 volts, it could be a bad voltage regulator in your alternator, so you might have to replace that and you don't want to have too many volts. More voltage isn't good.

Over 14.6 volts could damage your battery. So if you see that that's one problem now, let's just say you see the opposite problem. You see something below the 13.6 volt threshold. Well, we're testing the voltage at the battery, so that doesn't mean your alternator is bad necessarily.

It could mean that between the positive post and the alternator there's a bad cable or a bad connection. So how do we verify that? It's actually the alternator? That's bad! If you see low voltage, you test the voltage at the actual alternator. Now you want to be careful with your test leads here, don't get any of the wires wrapped up in the belt. That's spinning! That would be very bad, but on the back here we have a positive wire and then our alternator case is our negative.

That's our ground, so scrape it a little bit like that to get a good connection and you can see we have 14.1 volts, which is perfectly fine. So if you find your voltage is low at the alternator, you could be pretty sure that your alternator is the problem. If you find your voltage is normal at the alternator but low at the battery, then there's probably a connection issue from your alternator to your battery. There's a wire and there's connections, this connection right here could be loose, it could be corroded or the wire could be damaged or corroded so check that.

So that's how you test an alternator super easy to do, and in this case our alternator is working great. So now, let's shut the engine and test for parasitic draw now a parasitic draw is an electrical component in your car, that's drawing on the battery when the car is shut off and there really shouldn't be much of a draw. The only things that should really draw on a battery when the car is off is your security system, maybe like the clock on the radio, and maybe your computer a little bit, but it shouldn't be more than 50 milliamps. If you have more than that, your battery could drain overnight, it could drain in a couple days it could drain in a week, depending on how big that draw is.
So let me show you how to identify if you do have a parasitic draw and then, where that draw might be coming from the first thing, you're going to do is make sure everything in the car is off. There's no interior lights on there's no headlights on and if your hood is propped open, like this make sure your car doesn't know the hood's open some cars have a hooded jar switch. If it does press it down tape it up whatever you need to do make it think that the hood's closed. You basically want the car to go to sleep.

If you have a key fob, especially a keyless entry fob or your car starts with a push button. Make sure you move this far away from the car, so it could go to sleep and now what we're gon na do is we're gon na disconnect the negative terminal on the battery. Some people like to test on the positive side i like to test on the ground side that way, if you ground out by accident, it doesn't cause any damage so unscrew and disconnect the negative battery cable. And what we're going to do is we're going to bridge this gap right here with our multimeter, but first, what we need to do is we need to take this positive, cable from the regular spot and put it into the dc amp spot and then we're going To turn the multimeter to dc amps right there, you can see it's 10 amps.

Now we need to use the leads to bridge the gap. So i want to get one lead on our cable here. It doesn't matter which color and then the other lead on our post here, but to make a good connection, i'm going to just use one of these hose clamps that way it's nice and tight against the post and right away. You can see we have about a .07 amp draw so 70 milliamps.

Now a rule of thumb is you want to be 50 milliamps or less that varies from car to car, but 50 milliamps is an average since we're pretty close at 70 milliamps. I'm not concerned. We don't have a parasitic draw. If you had 100 milliamps, so 0.1 amps of a draw or higher, then there could be a problem.

Now we just connected this, so what we want to do is we want to wait at least 15 minutes to make sure the car goes to sleep and then double check that number okay, so 15 minutes later our draw is still the same 70 milliamps on older Cars, they basically go to sleep right away, but if you have a newer car, definitely wait that 15 minutes, because it needs to go to sleep to make sure that your amp draw is accurate. Now let me show you how to tell where the parasitic draw is coming from. So again our draw is solo. We don't have a parasitic draw.

I just want to show you as an example. What you would do is you'd watch your multimeter and you'd pull out a fuse. So let's just pull out this fuse right here and we'd see. Does that affect the amperage? No, it doesn't.

Okay, so put the fuse back and let's move on to our next fuse. We'll pull that fuse; no, it doesn't affect it and so on and so forth. Until you see your amperage drop, so let's pretend i pull this fuse and our amperage drops well now we know whatever this fuse is for. That is where our problem is located.
So take a look there. The other thing is, if you pull all the fuses in your car - and you still have a big draw check, this cable on the alternator, pull this cable off, disconnect it completely and see. If your draw stops, sometimes there's a draw in the alternator and you wouldn't be able to find it just by pulling fuses now we know the alternator is working fine. We know we don't have a parasitic draw, so that leaves us with a bad battery.

So now let me show you how to replace the battery without actually disconnecting it from the car you're not going to lose 12 volts. So your radio stations don't disappear. Your clock doesn't reset any presets in your car. Don't reset and the computer of your car won't reset and real quick just to prove that this works.

If we take a look at the clock, you can see it says 216. If the battery resets that'll go all the way back to 12 o'clock, and also if you look at my channels here for the radio, those are some of my favorite radio channels. They are in there if the battery disconnects those channels will reset. So let me show you how this works.

First, get your new battery and put it nearby next you're gon na need some high quality, jumper cables and by high quality i mean the only parts of the alligator clip that is actually conductive is the tip you can see. The tips are conductive. The handles here are not conductive they're coated and that's going to be very helpful because we do not want these to touch and it's also a good idea to have a second person helping now we take our first cable, the black ground and connect it to a Chassis ground, a bare piece of metal on the car next grab your red and connect it to the positive side of the battery on the cable. If you can try not to get it on the post, it'll make it easier later on, you'll see why and finally, with our last two jumpers, connect the red to the positive post and the black to the negative post and be very sure not to mix this Up okay, so let's do a quick review real fast! We have our old battery right here.

I disconnected the battery tie down that way. We could easily just pull this battery out. Also, the terminals are slightly loosened so that we could easily just pull these off. So we have our red to the positive.

We have our black to a chassis ground and then on the other side, we have our brand new battery and then black to negative red to positive and right now, if we disconnect our battery here, we still have juice going to the car with our new battery. So, basically, now we just transplant it now is when your helper comes in handy to remove the positive wire from the battery and you can remove the negative wire and then remove the old battery from the car make sure that positive wire is held in place and Doesn't come in contact with any metal parts? Otherwise, it could short out so now with the new battery still remotely connected to the car, carefully put it into the holder, and then we can connect the negative cable first and don't remove the jumper cable until the negative cable makes good contact like that same. For the positive make sure you get good contact and then slide the positive cable, the rest of the way on, then we can remove the positive, jumper, cable and finally remove the negative jumper cable from the chassis ground. Now tighten down the negative, cable and tighten down the positive, cable and finally tighten down the tie down all right.
Give that a wiggle, that's not going anywhere. You could always add your silicone right after this i'm just super excited. I want to show you this we're going to do this. Live i'm not going to do any cuts here.

We're gon na get right in the car. Excuse the camera shakiness, okay, turn it to the run position and check it out. We have our clock here good. We have our radio stations boom, we didn't lose any connection at all.

That is awesome. Now you might be wondering why did the old battery go bad and i'm pretty confident the reason? Why is because i didn't have this car on a trickle charger and all winter long it was basically sitting there. I had it in storage, there was no electricity. I forgot to disconnect the battery so over time that 70 milliamp draw that you saw when we did.

The parasitic draw test that is gon na drain. The battery and batteries don't like getting drained and not recharged. When a battery sits and it's drained, you decrease the lifespan of the battery and the reason. Why is because lead sulfate crystals bond to the grid of the battery and that won't let the chemical reaction inside the battery happen efficiently.

The lead, sulfate crystals block the electrolyte from contacting the grid, and you lose cranking amps and your battery degrades. So you always want to make sure you keep your battery fully charged, and since this is a nice new battery, i don't want it to go bad. So what i suggest is at least once a week start your car and go for a ride. Not only is it good for the battery, but it's good for the car too.

Cars are meant to be driven, don't just start it and then shut it off in a few minutes. You actually want to go for a ride and have that battery charge up or another option is to install one of these trickle chargers that way you just plug it in after you park your car and to install the trickle charger. It's actually really easy. This part doesn't get installed.

This stays at your house. This little connector right here is what gets installed very simple. Black goes to the negative red, goes to the positive, so get the black ring terminal on here and then get a nut on there and tighten it down to hold it in place same with the positive use, a nut and tighten it down to hold it in Place then all you need to do is plug in your trickle charger when you go to park your car for a while, so i highly recommend setting up a trickle charger for cars. You don't use very often you can set it up just like that nice and easy to do that way.
When you go to use your car, your battery won't be dead, it'll start right up and that battery will last for years to come. Alright, so, as you saw multimeters give us a ton of information and help us diagnose a bad battery, but the one thing they don't do is load test the battery, so we're gon na use my duramax hummer as an example, and i'm gon na show you how To use a load tester to load test your batteries, so let's run through this real quick just like any car we're gon na start by removing the negative terminals first good and now, let's disconnect the positive terminals beautiful and now all we need to do is remove That bracket so now, both of our batteries are loose and ready to be removed. But before we do that, i want to show you how to load test these and we're going to be using one of these load. Testers they're.

Basically, a cheaper version of the good load testers they use at the parts store so connect the tester to the battery like. So this is a regular flooded battery then pick sae for our measurement of coal cranking amps, and this battery is rated for 800 cold cranking. Amps so set it to that, and you can see it tells us that we need to replace our battery. We have about 350 cold cranking amps compared to the 800 that we should have now, let's test the other battery real quick - and this also is telling us to replace the battery.

According to this, this is saying we have 70 cold cranking amps compared to the 800. The battery charge is a little bit low, so i'm sure it's a little bit higher than that, but at least it's telling us these batteries are bad and need to be replaced so out with the old and in with the new now don't forget to add some Silicone paste to the terminal ends and with two brand new batteries installed. There's one last thing to do all right moment of truth: let's see what we got. Oh man, she starts right up, no lag at all.

That is beautiful, that's even better than when i got the hummer, so there you go. That's my ultimate guide on how to diagnose and replace a battery in your car or truck. Now. What do you do with the old battery that you just replaced? Well, anytime, you go buy a new battery, there's an extra charge called a core charge and you get that money back when you bring back your old battery now, if you didn't buy a new battery, so you don't have a core charge, but you do have an Old battery just sitting around you could actually recycle it and make some money bring it to your local, advanced, auto parts and they'll give you a 10 gift card.
You can bring it to your local scrapyard. They'll pay you for it, because batteries are filled with lead which is valuable and easily recycled. Actually did you know? Car batteries are one of the world's most recycled items. 99 of a battery is recyclable.

So it's a good thing to do. Plus you make some extra cash now. I hope this video was helpful. Remember you want to try to avoid vibrations, avoid heat and avoid draining your battery and keeping it drained, always keep it topped off and that'll keep your battery lasting a good long time.

Hopefully, the video was helpful if it was remember to give it a thumbs up if you're not a subscriber, consider hitting that subscribe button and all the tools and products i used in this video are linked in the description below.

18 thoughts on “How to test and replace a bad car battery (complete ultimate guide)”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Ramirez1998 says:

    When I do the test for parasitic draw the multimeter probe sparks then I touch them to the battery. I have it in the 10 amp spot and on the 10 amp setting. Does anyone know why?

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars MT Records says:

    I have a question hopefully someone has an answer. I upgraded my radio in my 2015 camaro did it by myself. After I turned the car on I got a display saying "battery saver active" the battery icon never appeared or blinked. My car turns on and is able to run. I checked my battery gauge and it's at 14.4 when I drive. During the install my car was sitting 3 days straight in my garage with the wires disconnected from my stock radio since it was my first time doing something like this so I took my time to make sure I did everything right. Every time I turn my car on I get this display. Does someone know how to get rid of the message? Is it a bad sensor? Did leaving my car exposed with the wires caused that?

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Andre Benitez says:

    2009 Mercedes-Benz ML350, the battery is under the front passenger seat. It requires you to move the seat the all way forward and up,(it's an electric seat of course). Then you have to remove the air conditioning duct under the seat and cut an access hole in the carpet if it hasn't been done before. Process is so long that Autozone and Advanced aren't allowed to change it. My mom had the battery on hers go out in 2017 turned out to be the factory original Mercedes-Benz battery that was over 8 years old. Also they were atleast nice enough to put 2 battery posts under the hood for the sole purpose of jump starting. German engineering.

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars generic dude says:

    I'd rather reset the car stereo rather than risk a major, major arc or explosion or fire and a possible trip to the ER. But that's just me……

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars DonziGT230 says:

    Chris, someone like you could benefit from a battery rejuvenator. The one I've been using is the small 2 amp unit from Renaissance Charge. At $150 it's crazy money for a small charger, but I've brought back dozens of dead batteries with it so it's paid for itself many times over.

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars SlackersIndustry says:

    my town has cobblestone for its streets lol forget about the vibration. can u use them hummer batteries that still have 330cca maybe on a smaller 4cylinder car?

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Louie Basilio says:

    Do I have to take off my battery if I'm going for a 2 month vacation without using my car? How long do I need to to charge it for before installing again? It's almost winter now. Thank you so much.

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Vernon Vaught says:

    In a 2014 Dodge Avenger you can't even see the battery from the top of the vehicle. You have to remove the driver's front tire to replace the battery that is located between the front bumper and the wheel well.

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Khan Official says:

    Bro I'm having same exact problem that you showed on white car, but when I went to battery shop guy tested and told me that my alternator is bad. how come?

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars colin Bolton says:

    Great show. Some cars need to shut down before you change the battery. About 5 mins when all the instrument display has all gone off. Others need the system updating with exact battery type etc via a good OBD tool ,some have specific battery change buttons to save diving into the systems.

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars filpaul says:

    The first Gen Chrysler 200 has the battery on the bottom of the engine bay, means you have to remove the front left tire and the plastic wheel well. AAA won’t service this battery because of all the extra work.

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Healthon Luu says:

    Great help brother!!
    Question # my battery for Range Rover evoque 2018 is 12.22 volt is it sufficiently enough .the car still starts but the auto stop/start is not working
    Lastly how to check the alternater when the car is not running ? Is it possible?
    Thanks in advance ,

  13. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars David A Robinson says:

    Advance Auto should have provided the correct wire brush tool. Also a tube of dialectic grease so you could cover the posts before putting the cables on.
    Vaseline works as good as the pricey dialectic grease. There was a lot of helpful information.
    Thank you.

  14. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Rajkumar Ponnuthurai says:

    Bro, Why installed batteries drains after some time when parked.
    I understand very minute current could leak due to poor insulations.

    Thanks 😊

  15. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Rajkumar Ponnuthurai says:

    Bro, how different capacitated secondary batteries are made to same size!
    I understand that they all will accommodate the battery compartment/bay.

    Very nice presentation 👌
    Thanks 😊

  16. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Young Low says:

    So my battery is new and it’s not the right one for my car just bought it to get to work but it died in one day and i dint know if it’s my car or the battery I need help

  17. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars American AF! says:

    Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic! As a novice, information like this, and especially your easy to follow and understand presentation, gives me confidence that I can maintain/diagnose general issues with my own vehicles. Thank you!

  18. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Terry Parker says:

    The battery analyzer your using in the video appears to be a Foxwell BT100 Pro. The link you listed is for an analog Schumacher analyzer. Do you prefer one over the other or does it have more to do with sponsorship?

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