What Can You Really Learn About Your Battery's Health?

Your car's starter battery isn't something you likely think about too often. After all, you shouldn't need to worry about your battery as long as it provides enough juice to get your engine running. Unfortunately, ignoring your battery for too long can leave you blindsided when it suddenly refuses to get your engine turning on a cold winter morning.

Testing your battery is one option to stay on top of its health and learn if you need to start planning for a replacement. However, battery testing isn't as straightforward as you might initially think. In many cases, you may need to perform multiple tests to learn what you need to know about your battery's health. Keep reading to learn how these tests differ and what they can tell you about your car's charging system.

The Basics: Multimeter Testing

You probably already know that you can learn a bit about your battery by sticking a multimeter on the terminals and taking a reading. Testing a battery with a multimeter is relatively simple and something almost anyone can do. Unfortunately, this test won't always provide conclusive results or confirm that you need a new battery.

While a battery that fails a multimeter test is almost certainly bad, a passing one doesn't mean everything is fine. Since your multimeter doesn't place a load across your battery, there's no way to know if it can maintain a charge. The battery may provide enough voltage but quickly fail after driving for a while and turn your vehicle off.

More Advanced Options: Professional Testing

Bringing your car to a professional opens up several more options for learning about your battery's health through testing. Professionals will typically use three tools that most backyard mechanics won't have: load testers, battery analyzers, and refractometers. These tools can provide substantially more insight into the overall condition of your battery.

Load testers and battery analyzers are the most common options. These tools help assess your battery's state by determining if it can hold a charge and maintain it while under load. This information can save you from recharging your battery only to have it fail again a few days or weeks in the future. In other words, a good load test can save you time, money, and frustration.

Refractometers are less common, but they can give you the final word on your battery's health. A refractometer allows a technician to test the condition of the battery acid in each cell. Since even a single faulty cell will condemn your battery, this test will provide a conclusive result on whether or not you need to buy a replacement.

There's no way to avoid it: if your battery fails, you'll need a new one. Battery testing allows you to deal with these problems before your battery gives up the ghost entirely, saving you the time and frustration of dealing with a battery that dies without warning. For more information about battery testing, contact a local service.