I'll leave out the backstory, and the excuses. Battery in question is an Optima Yellow Top, which I wish I hadn't bought anyway, but whatever. Here's what I did:
1. Ran it ~60 miles with a weak negative terminal connection. It was bad enough that the car wouldn't crank at all, though it started with a jump and seemed to run okay.
2. Accidentally shorted the battery for a few seconds, and saw sparks from the (evidently poorly connected) negative terminal.
After all this, the battery tested at 614 cranking amps; spec is 640. With the connection fixed, the car cranks more or less as it did before (hard to tell with changing temps).
How likely is it that I've hurt the battery? Should my portable jumpstarter be a permanent fixture in the car until I ditch this battery, or should I not worry until I notice other bad signs?
1. Ran it ~60 miles with a weak negative terminal connection. It was bad enough that the car wouldn't crank at all, though it started with a jump and seemed to run okay.
2. Accidentally shorted the battery for a few seconds, and saw sparks from the (evidently poorly connected) negative terminal.
After all this, the battery tested at 614 cranking amps; spec is 640. With the connection fixed, the car cranks more or less as it did before (hard to tell with changing temps).
How likely is it that I've hurt the battery? Should my portable jumpstarter be a permanent fixture in the car until I ditch this battery, or should I not worry until I notice other bad signs?