Guru
Joined: 21/06/2018
Location: AustraliaPosts: 1231
| Posted: 01:39am 29 Sep 2025 |
Aaron, I have had a pretty extraordinary experience with an automotive battery. I bought a new Diesel Jeep Grand Cherokee in 2014. It has an AC Delco AGM under the passenger seat. The 200,000 km service is due next week. The car is still running with its original battery ( touch wood ) I am well aware that for the last half a dozen years I have been living on borrowed time. The brake pads & rotors are still original but expect there is only a few mm left on the pads by now.
The battery still sounds so strong when starting I decided to leave it alone and undertake a ~ 12,000 km trip up through the middle & all over WA ( currently in Perth).
I doubt that everyone will believe this story, but when it finally dies I will take some pics of date code etc. I am taking the attitude of if it ain’t broke leave it alone.
I am confident that if I was prudent and replaced the battery routinely ~ 6 years ago its replacement would have died long ago so now curiosity stops me replacing it. I have never accidentally run the battery flat and it has never seen a charger other than via the alternator.
Lastly to date the total cost of spare parts for the car is 8$ to replace a cracked plastic connector for the drivers side window washer a few years back. Apart from services & tyres and fuel it’s been a good run given that at least 30,000km was towing a ~ 2.5T van.