Advance Auto Parts

We all dread the flat battery but why does it happen and what can you do about it?

Well, with a small amount of knowledge and some handy gadgets we can either avoid or easily deal with this. So, lets go through a few car battery basics and save £’s on garage repair bills.

Testing a battery and the cars battery charging ability

This is very simple, testing the voltage when the car is not running should give a reading on a voltmeter of around 12-13 volts, this should rise to just over 14 volts when the car is running, we sell a multitude of different battery and alternator testers for performing this test, starting from under £10, they will give a pretty good guide about these two essentials.

If you get good readings from tester but have been caught out on the odd cold morning, it may be that your battery is on its last legs as the output of a battery falls considerably in the cold. If you only do short journeys it may be that you battery is not faulty but is not getting fully charged due to the vehicles charging time being too short to replace the considerable amount of energy it takes to start the engine in the first place. In that case an overnight charge on a car battery charger may solve the problem, but may need recharging regularly, or at least during cold weather. If you only occasionally use a vehicle we sell an excellent device that can be left connected to the vehicle and keep the battery fully charged at all time, the Draper Battery Master is great for that type of scenario.

If you have accidentally left something turned on (like an interior light) for several hours and your battery is flat, a jump start is probably all you need. You can either perform this in the usual way using jump leads and connection to another car or a boost pack. A good tip for this method is to leave the vehicle you are jump starting from running for several minutes before attempting to start the flat battery car. This will allow a surface (instant) charge to accumulate in the flat battery making to car easier to start and not putting as much load on the battery and jumps leads. If you need to change a battery, we sell a large selection of battery tools to help with this chore, even including a battery carrier. If you are concerned about losing radio codes whilst you change a battery the Sealey Memory Master attaches to a 12V slave battery and provides power via the cigarette lighter socket to on-board electronics whilst vehicle’s own battery is disconnected