Mechanic & Auto Electrical for Allenby Gardens

This page is about batteries, because in Adelaide they fail more often and for a different reason than most people expect.

The common belief is that batteries die in winter. They usually fail in winter, but the damage is done in summer.

Heat accelerates the chemical breakdown inside the battery and evaporates electrolyte. An Adelaide summer with a run of days over 40 degrees does real, permanent damage to capacity. You do not notice, because a hot engine starts easily and a weakened battery still has enough left to turn it.

Then the first genuinely cold morning arrives. Cold thickens the oil, so the starter needs more current, at exactly the moment the battery can deliver least. That is when it finally refuses.

So a battery that dies in July was usually killed in February.

• Short trips. Starting takes a large current and only sustained running replaces it. A pattern of brief journeys leaves the battery in slow net discharge.
• Under-bonnet heat. Batteries mounted in hot engine bays age faster than those in cooler positions.
• Sitting unused. Modern cars draw current constantly for alarms and electronics.
• Repeated deep discharge. Every full flattening permanently removes capacity.

Voltage on its own tells you almost nothing. A tired battery can read a healthy 12.6 volts at rest and still collapse under load.

A proper test applies a load and measures how the voltage holds. That is the difference between knowing a battery is fine and hoping it is. A mechanic Allenby Gardens drivers use should be load testing, not just checking a number.

We also check the charging side, because an alternator putting out too little will flatten a good battery, and one putting out too much will cook it. If the same battery has gone flat twice, ask a mechanic Allenby Gardens drivers trust to test the alternator output before you buy another one.

2/208 Grange Rd, Flinders Park, three minutes from Allenby Gardens.

Call (08) 8443 7900.

—

Brands & Partners