save money buying a used battery from a battery specialist.
bought mine in '98 from a battery shop in an industrial park.
about half the price of new at a discount chain.
they get them out of totaled cars or something.
find them in the Yellow Pages.

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William R Watt    National Capital FreeNet    Ottawa's free community network
homepage: www.ncf.ca/~ag384/top.htm 
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cold cranking amps
i lived in ak for years and i always bought the top of the line battery
due to the winter months  but i also had a water heater (perculator) in
line on the water pump hose   so if you  are only subject to a few cold
months i would just by the oem recomondation    (also keep in mind cars
with timming belts in cold weather due slip  so never push start them )

Consumer Reports publishes a review of car batteries every November,
but it doesn't seem to be particularly in predicting which brands are
best because their rankings seem to change greatly each year.  I doubt
you need anything close to 650 CCA, and some companies boost CCA by
increasing the surface area of the plates without increasing the amount
of plate material, and this can reduce longevity and reserve capacity
(number of minutes battery can put out 25A).

Get a fresh battery, especially if it's not maintenance-free
(discharges faster in storage), and give it a long, slow charge at the
beginning.  And attaching an automatic charger every week can increase
a battery's lifespan 1-2 years, and the final charge rate is a decent
indicator of the condition (lower is better), but don't rely on this
for a battery more than about 5 years old.

2 to 5 years is considered acceptable battery life - especially when
the 2-3 weeks of bitter cold of the winter is accompanied by 2-3 weeks
of the summer.

When I worked at Pep Boys, their 60 month batteries had the best
reliability - the (new at that time) 72 month units had more cranking
power, but failed on a more frequent basis. They were prone to
shorting. Could it be the higher plate count via thinner plates that
gave good CCA numbers affected real-world reliability numbers by
making them prone to failure from vibration, heat,  and
(unintentional) deep cycle usage?

Get a battery that meets the vehicle's CCA requirements (650 if
AC-Delco's site is correct) and you should be fine.

Make sure that if the vehicle has a heat shield for the battery, it is
installed correctly. They don't provide them for nothing.

Finally, you may want to have the parasitic draw (current that the
various electronics in the vehicle draw when off) should be less than
50 ma (as a rule).

Good luck,

Jim

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