Honda OEM battery still good after 7 years

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Always, always, do a pre-emptive strike on batteries, unless you like to change them in bad weather with icey fingers, bad tools, and NO TIME.
 
My wife had a 1992 buick skylark, we left the car home when we got married and went on our honeymoon, when we returned the car would not start. We got married in 2001, so I figure that original AC delco battery did it's job. I can't say many good things about that car, but the battery was good.
 
I maintain all of the batteries in my vehicles by checking for corosion on the +/- posts and checking each cell for proper acid level and if needed I add a bit of RO/DI/Distilled water. When the batteries finaly qutit or get weak they get replaced as I have done what I can do to make them last as long as possible. I'll even periodicly check the voltage with a meter to make sure it's where it should be.
 
Originally Posted By: AcuraTech
Most of the American made Hondas of that vintage had Delphi batteries. They weren't very good, most only last about 2-3 years. Japan sourced cars mostly came with Panasonic batteries. Excellent batteries, usually last 5+ years - sometimes 10 or 12 years. Honda quit using OEM Delphi batteries a couple years ago, now they're mostly sourced by Johnson Controls. The new MDX has a strange seemingly no name battery, it could quite possibly be Chinese (has lot's of Chinese characters printed on it)

Honda and Acura branded replacement batteries are made by Interstate. No problems with them, I've had one in my car for 4 years. Interstate is my personal choice for replacement batteries, I've had nothing but good luck with them. Die Hard is also pretty good, not a fan of Exide batteries.


The Delphi Freedom in my wife's 2003 Acura 3.2TL with an in-service date of August 2002 is still going strong. I recently load tested it and followed that up with a trickle-charge at .75 amps with my Battery Tender. It reached full charge in about 2 hours.

I see no signs of problems so far, but at 6.5 years now, it is inevitable it will fail. Thinking of limping it along though just to see how long it will last.
 
Originally Posted By: Jim 5
Originally Posted By: AcuraTech
Most of the American made Hondas of that vintage had Delphi batteries. They weren't very good, most only last about 2-3 years. Japan sourced cars mostly came with Panasonic batteries. Excellent batteries, usually last 5+ years - sometimes 10 or 12 years. Honda quit using OEM Delphi batteries a couple years ago, now they're mostly sourced by Johnson Controls. The new MDX has a strange seemingly no name battery, it could quite possibly be Chinese (has lot's of Chinese characters printed on it)

Honda and Acura branded replacement batteries are made by Interstate. No problems with them, I've had one in my car for 4 years. Interstate is my personal choice for replacement batteries, I've had nothing but good luck with them. Die Hard is also pretty good, not a fan of Exide batteries.


The Delphi Freedom in my wife's 2003 Acura 3.2TL with an in-service date of August 2002 is still going strong. I recently load tested it and followed that up with a trickle-charge at .75 amps with my Battery Tender. It reached full charge in about 2 hours.

I see no signs of problems so far, but at 6.5 years now, it is inevitable it will fail. Thinking of limping it along though just to see how long it will last.


Why would the battery in your 2003 Acura need any charge unless it was started and driven say 100 feet. The alternator should recharge the battery to replace what was used to start the vehicle very quickly and no extra charge should be needed.
 
A multi-stage (bulk, absorption, float) charger can bring a battery closer to 100% state-of-charge than an alternator can.

Also, I've read articles in trade journals which suggest that heavy use of electrical accessories such as seat heaters, defrosters, etc. in city traffic can result in the battery not being charged very well by the alternator. This is thought to be a major cause of battery problems.
 
just had a 12 year old east penn/deka pride wheelchair battery in my work truck die.it was a 1 year pull from a wheelchair.
probably had several hundred cycles on it when i got it.
i figured its days were numbered but wanted to see how far it would go.had a optima redtop in the back incase i got a sudden death but it gave lots of warning before i changed it out.
 
Originally Posted By: Donald
Originally Posted By: Jim 5
Originally Posted By: AcuraTech
Most of the American made Hondas of that vintage had Delphi batteries. They weren't very good, most only last about 2-3 years. Japan sourced cars mostly came with Panasonic batteries. Excellent batteries, usually last 5+ years - sometimes 10 or 12 years. Honda quit using OEM Delphi batteries a couple years ago, now they're mostly sourced by Johnson Controls. The new MDX has a strange seemingly no name battery, it could quite possibly be Chinese (has lot's of Chinese characters printed on it)

Honda and Acura branded replacement batteries are made by Interstate. No problems with them, I've had one in my car for 4 years. Interstate is my personal choice for replacement batteries, I've had nothing but good luck with them. Die Hard is also pretty good, not a fan of Exide batteries.


The Delphi Freedom in my wife's 2003 Acura 3.2TL with an in-service date of August 2002 is still going strong. I recently load tested it and followed that up with a trickle-charge at .75 amps with my Battery Tender. It reached full charge in about 2 hours.

I see no signs of problems so far, but at 6.5 years now, it is inevitable it will fail. Thinking of limping it along though just to see how long it will last.


Why would the battery in your 2003 Acura need any charge unless it was started and driven say 100 feet. The alternator should recharge the battery to replace what was used to start the vehicle very quickly and no extra charge should be needed.


I have also heard that alternators do what you described. Since it sat outside for two weeks in -15C while I was in Arizona, then it was started and driven 10 feet into the garage. Just wanted to test it, because seeing how long it takes to bring a battery like that to 14.4v after sitting for a while gave me a feel for the battery's condition.

My BMW will take 3 days to charge at .75 amps after it has sat for two-three weeks without being started. Though the parasitic voltage draw on those vehicles is enormous and that 330ci has already taken out 2 1000 CCA batteries in the same conditions.
 
My OEM Nissan battery lasted about 7 years, having been replaced in May of this year.

It was one of those batteries that gave ample warning to it's failure. The previous summer and winter it would crank unusually slow at severe temps. It made it very obvious that failure was on its way. This last summer, the slow starts pretty much said loud and clear REPLACE BATTERY.

I finally replaced it with a Duralast Gold (Johnson Controls) and feel like I'd gotten 99% of the life out of the last one.
 
Originally Posted By: M1Accord
I am on the original battery and just had it load tested. The battery is still perfectly functional after 7 years of driving. Of course, the dealership tried to sell me a new battery when I brought it in to have correct the brake indicator light, which didn't turn off until the car was warm up. They charged me almost 70 bucks to just put a floater in there.

Does anyone know who makes battery for Honda Accord 2002 V6? I love to replace it with the same battery if possible.


Those Original AC/DELCO Batteries are pretty good.
That's the battery I've seen in those cars.
 
There's a slight problem with load and conductance testing, as I've discovered. These can only you if the battery has the cranking amps to start the engine.

They tell you NOTHING about the battery's reserve capacity. It's very possible for a battery that has lost 50% of it's reserve capacity (which is how long it can power a load with the engine off, such as your radio, laptop computer, headlights, etc.) to still pass a load test.

I had one such battery, an 85 amp-hour marine deep cycle battery (around 550CCAs, as I recall). I thought it wasn't quite lasting as long as it should so I charged it up and did a test. I used an inverter to power my desktop PC until it died. This particular battery, which had passed a conductance test with a Midtronics Incharge diagnostic charger (as well as a 100 amp load tester), only powered the desktop PC for 4 hours and 39 minutes.

Another identical (same make/model) marine deep-cycle battery, also passed a load test but powered the desktop PC for 10 hours and 25 minutes!

(I didn't sit there with a stopwatch, by the way. I just wrote a script to ping the desktop PC every minute from another PC and write the results to a file. When the pings stopped coming back is when the PC died due to the battery going dead).

Obviously the first battery was bad, but load AND conductance testing did not show any problems with it. I returned that battery and got another one under warranty.

The following links explain the problem:


http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-42A.htm
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-42C.htm
 
If my battery lasts 6 yrs, I always change it in the 7th year...

on a nice sunny day at my leisure; instead of in the middle of the next winter in a parking lot, a long way from home...at night.
thumbsup2.gif
 
I'd have to say, batteries by and large are much better than they used to be. I average ten years on most OEM's, and at least five or six off of cheap store brands. The only recent battery I can recall that had no life was a Champion from K-Mart, I got about six months off of it and its warrantied replacement.
 
My GMC Sierra has 5+ years on the original Battery and it's still going strong.
 
My 5 year old Honda battery died on Tuesday. Rest in Peace.

Replaced it with a new battery with 200 more CCA and I can't believe the difference. Cranking speed at 10F is about the same as 80F.
 
The original factory battery in the Tercel I used to own lasted 11 years. I've never seen a battery last that long before or since.
 
We has a '94 Accord where the original battery lasted over 10 years. It was an AC Delco made battery (Ohio built Accord.)

Back in college I had an '82 Tercel and the original battery was still in it when I sold the car in '92. It was a Japanese branded battery of some sort.

On the other hand I recently (2006) had an Everstart Maxx 1N from Wal Mart fail in less than one year. It went from working fine to being stone dead without warning. It would not hold a charge so Wal Mart gave me a new one. It probably shorted internally. I guess it was a lemon...

Andrew S.
 
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