They're selling out of batteries...

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Was at Advance Auto today, trying to get some -30'F windshield fluid. Ok, they're out of that. The other customers were all there for batteries and the shelves are about half empty. They turned someone away, being out of their size.

Meanwhile a customer sat in her car honking the horn every 30 seconds. Counter guy said she was waiting for a free battery install. It seems they were blowing her off for the walk-in customers, and, I presume, for her continuing attitude.

-16 this morning. Getting hairy up here.
 
Saw low stock in most battery groups at Wally World today. Checked on group 35, just out of curiosity and they had three, all dated 10/2017.
 
there's quite a few places in town that have batteries so I've never saw a shortage of them.


either way i have a spare battery just in case.
 
... and I got an email from the school dept saying they can't get the bus fleet started and might not have school tomorrow. At least someone went in and checked!
 
Originally Posted By: eljefino
Counter guy said she was waiting for a free battery install.


They only do a free install if the battery is easily accessible. Meaning nothing else needs to be removed.
 
Bought myself a new 35N Maxx battery at WM just before the deep freeze. I had been thinking about it for a while and had some cranks around 10F that I thought seemed more sluggish than they should.
WM still had a decent selection at that point.
I started it with the car reporting a -13F temperature during a ski trip, although I suspect that it reports temps just a little low...I have been driving in rain with this car reporting 29F with no ice buildup, if my RAV4 reported 31-32F with rain it almost always meant freezing rain conditions. I used remote start in that temp and couldn't hear how slow the cranking was, the wind was howling at that point...I think that it is cranking a little better with the new battery, but that could just be wishful thinking on my part.
 
When I go into places like this, all the winter stuff is moved near the doors to encourage customers to buy everything in the store. When it rains, its wiper blades. When its cold, its gas line antifreeze, etc. Its funny, the Walmart battery in my small car is like nine years old, it needs a new one but still works.
 
I was gonna see if the Rat will start, just to see. Nah, I'll deal with it tomorrow when I do the 1500' rubbish run. I'm not worried though. I don't think I've hit 0F My Brother on the side of Mt Mansfield, VT hit -21F today. I went out do dump some dish water too greasy for the drains. Less than 30 seconds. Yesterday, I broomed off the walk while I heated some American chop suey in the microwave. I was back inside with 45 seconds to spare.
 
Originally Posted By: eljefino
Was at Advance Auto today, trying to get some -30'F windshield fluid. Ok, they're out of that. The other customers were all there for batteries and the shelves are about half empty. They turned someone away, being out of their size.

Meanwhile a customer sat in her car honking the horn every 30 seconds. Counter guy said she was waiting for a free battery install. It seems they were blowing her off for the walk-in customers, and, I presume, for her continuing attitude.

-16 this morning. Getting hairy up here.


Bozo woman can't take 5 minutes to enter the store and talk to an employee ?
 
The Motorcraft battery in my '97 Tracer wagon was slow cranking the week before Christmas. I had Christmas week off and the car sat.

It gave up a few days ago... I'm not mad whatsoever as I checked my records and it was installed 3/14/2005!

However the nearest battery in stock was at an AutoZone 25 miles away. I've never had a DuraLast before but didn't have much of a choice.
 
These are the days that remind me why I load test batteries & check antifreeze concentration in the fall. Other than my 6.2 GMCs 2 recent untimely OPS failures, I've been lucky so far.
 
At the five year mark I start shopping for a good price on a new battery. I may have wasted some money throwing out a low capacity, low reserve 61 month old battery that might not work on the coldest days of the year... but I can live with that.
 
Just put a new duracell gold from sams in the 2013 outback

650CCA, 3 year free replacement $83.87

made by penn-deka.

Went to pick it up.. was 5 guys mounting tires no one manning the desk..

they all stared in at me for 10min.. so I called the store and asked it I could checkout the battery up front they said yes just leave the core charge in the tire center.. so the crusty old battery got plopped down right on their desk.

At least they waved me though the service desk line for checkout after waiting for 10min at the tire center desk.
 
The unknown-age (date not punched) battery in my Vic doesn't seem affected, despite "failing" a load test at Batteries Plus last year...the car cranked just fine at -6 today. The 4-year-old Walmart batteries in my wife's Blazer are also fine, powering the glow plugs and cranking it over easily.
 
Originally Posted By: Mr Nice
Originally Posted By: eljefino
Was at Advance Auto today, trying to get some -30'F windshield fluid. Ok, they're out of that. The other customers were all there for batteries and the shelves are about half empty. They turned someone away, being out of their size.

Meanwhile a customer sat in her car honking the horn every 30 seconds. Counter guy said she was waiting for a free battery install. It seems they were blowing her off for the walk-in customers, and, I presume, for her continuing attitude.

-16 this morning. Getting hairy up here.


Bozo woman can't take 5 minutes to enter the store and talk to an employee ?



I'm assuming she was in there before I was and they told her to wait. Her waiting in the car was probably her idea. Probably a real man-hating piece of work, too, but I'm projecting.
laugh.gif
 
Just replaced the battery in the CRV. Duralast gold was 2.5 years old. Still under warranty. My fault for not checking the fluid level.
 
Originally Posted By: eljefino
Was at Advance Auto today, trying to get some -30'F windshield fluid. Ok, they're out of that. The other customers were all there for batteries and the shelves are about half empty. They turned someone away, being out of their size.

Meanwhile a customer sat in her car honking the horn every 30 seconds. Counter guy said she was waiting for a free battery install. It seems they were blowing her off for the walk-in customers, and, I presume, for her continuing attitude.

-16 this morning. Getting hairy up here.


Its people like that lady that will really be in trouble if there is ever a true catastrophe in this country where people need to fend for themselves for weeks or even months. There are so many people in this country that have such an extreme sense of entitlement and are accustomed to instant gratification. My guess is she came in with a nasty attitude and the staff treated her accordingly.

When I was an auto technician I remember how many customers would be downright nasty because they expect to never have to outlay any money for maintenance or repair on a vehicle and act as if it your fault that their car needed attention.

I remember there was a lady with a 98 or 99 grand am, it would eat thru brakes, We are talking 9k miles to 15k miles. i even seem to remember one set that only made it to 7500 miles. This vehicle had maybe 60k on it IIRC. Now the driver of the vehicle was nice but man her mom was a real nasty thing. It was our fault for the issues with the car and we were just stupid grease monkeys and were incapable of fixing the daughters car correctly. Now I admit we all make mistakes but.....

We scratched our heads on why this particular car ate brake pads. N bodys almost always got 25 to 30k minimum on brakes in our area. Nothing was hanging up, I think we might have ended up putting calipers on at some point but I dont remember. There was no reson for this vehicle to be eating front pads. Well finally I went for a ride with her and I knew the answer to the problem. She was downright abusive to the brakes and drove like a maniac. In addition to the wasteful and aggressive braking there was also another issue.

Those Grand-am Gts have more than enough power to spin the tires on dry pavement so in the rain or the snow the traction control often kicked in when driven in a aggressive fashion.

Now when the traction control would engage on that particular car it would apply the brake to the drive wheel that had the slippage or both if they decided to both spin.

Well between her hard driving and the frequent interjection of traction control it was no wonder why she ate thru brakes.

We tried to gently educate her on the workings of that vehicles braking system to try to help her get better life from the pads.

I remember her asking me "am I really that hard on the brakes?" I said um.... well...um....Ive ridden with a lot of different people and it seems you are a bit more aggressive with braking than most.

In reality She was the hardest driver on brakes I have ever seen. I dont think I could have been more wasteful with the brakes if I tried.

I moved on to another shop not long after that and I often wonder if she adjusted her driving style or shes still in the brake job of the month club.
 
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Forget the -30 washer fluid. Just dump a pint of rubbing alcohol into what's in there now and you should be fine.
The battery fever is no surprise. We were at an AZ Sunday trolling for clearance oil and a steady stream of battery buyers were there as well.
Common sense should tell any owner that if the battery has some years on it and cranks slowly at 20F then it probably isn't going to make it in real cold.
People who think nothing about dropping a few hundred on a new handset get all hot and bothered about buying a hundred buck battery for the car they rely upon to get them to work every day.
Go figure.
 
Ha if somebody sat outside honking their horn they would get no help from anybody at the O'Something I work at. We install batteries at our discretion as a complimentary favor if it's an easy car, it's not busy, we have coverage inside, the weather is good, and the customer is friendly. Any attitude? Nope, sorry, we don't put in batteries - take it to the shop.

And yes even here in California (Marin county) we've been selling a lot of batteries. It's not THAT cold but still, battery sales go up. Also on days where it's extremely hot, I've noticed.
 
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