Car batteries are amazing, but winter weather can take its toll on them. Mother Nature isn’t kind to automobile batteries, especially when she hits us here in Palmer, MA, with temperatures in the teens and 20s. Demore’s Automotive recommends that you take care of your car now before the temperatures drop and the holidays hit. This saves you the added stress of car trouble in the middle of December or January, and nobody has the time or patience for that!
Let’s Talk About the Battery First
It helps to know how automobile batteries are constructed and how they work in order to understand why winter packs such a punch on them. Inside your vehicle’s battery, you’ll find eight lead plates, sulfuric acid, and water. These three things combine to create a chemical reaction, and that chemical reaction enables the battery to store and produce voltage, i.e. power.
You’ve heard of battery cells, right? Well, your car’s battery has four cells. These cells are actually two of the lead plates put together to create one cell. Each cell has the ability to generate up to 4.2 volts, making the total voltage in a new car battery about 12.8 volts. Some have a little more; some less. The less power you have the more likely your car battery will die when it’s stressed out.
Enter Winter Weather Stress
If your car battery is getting old, two-to-three years, it probably cannot charge up to 12.8 volts anymore. In addition to this power loss, when Mother Nature decides to freeze us here in Palmer with temperatures 32 degrees or below, your battery loses more power. When it’s cold enough to freeze it’s cold enough to slow down the voltage-generating chemical reaction inside the battery.
The power loss simply caused by freezing temperatures can be as much as 30 percent, but be thankful you don’t live in a climate that has below-zero winters. Once the temperature reaches zero, a vehicle’s battery will lose up to 60 percent of its power. When you couple this power loss with normal stress on a battery, including your accessories, it’s no wonder the battery keeps dying in the winter.
You can avoid this by letting Demore’s Automotive test your vehicle’s battery now. We’ll see how much voltage it’s generating and if it isn’t enough to get you safely through the winter, we’ll replace the battery with a new one. You can call our Palmer, MA, auto service shop for more info.
