I recently had to replace a truck battery. Unsurprising really, since the last time it was new was six years ago. But there was no point where it seemed to be in difficulty. It basically went from working well to not meaningfully responding even after being boosted.
I would have thought that these things would kind of progress slowly and give warning signs over a longer period of time. OTOH, maybe I’m wrong since things like remotes tend to work unless they don’t. Which pattern is more common with cars?
Most car batteries are the common starter lead-acid type with a high CCA or cold cranking amps, but the lead plates inside are thin, because the battery will start the car often and only needs a little charge to keep going and start the car again the next time.
If your truck was not a daily driver and started often, there can be more strain on the battery and it wears out sooner. If the vehicle has added accessories it will drain the battery more often adding to the issue. I switched to a more deep cycle battery when I put in a dash camera. Fewer CCAs but thicker plates inside that will hold a charge longer and be less affected by the accessories.
Basically cars will work until the voltage and amperage get to the point where they can’t turn the car over any more. There can be signs, but it’s one of those sorts of things where if they exist, they’re very subtle- it may turn over a tad slower, but generally when the battery is too weak the solenoid won’t engage, and it’ll just click.
Around here, six years is fantastic because of the heat. Usually they’re good for more like 2-4 years, and that’s for ones like the Autozone Duralast Gold batteries.
About the only warning sign I’ll ever get is if it struggles to start in the morning but does better as it warms up. If it’s summer wherever you are now then I’m not surprised you didn’t get any warning.
Car battery technology is incredibly advanced. Car batteries have a predicted lifespan, usually expressed in a number of months. The battery will be marked for the month it was produced and it will fail exactly 1 day after the predicted lifespan is reached.
The “12 volt” auto start battery was made standard in 1956, at that time there weren’t a lot of accessories nor constant drain devices acting as parasites like there is today. By comparison, lead-acid batteries in stationary use provide about 20 years service. 5 or 6 years typical service life shows how brutal the automotive environment is. Heat, and vibration, are very hard on car batteries. And they get no love or attention usually, until they fail. There has been talk over the years about modernizing batteries to much higher voltages, but nothing ever came of it.
Car batteries can and do fail often at any time, without warning. Keeping them topped off on a “smart charger” or battery tender will maximize their service life, but that isn’t always practical.
If you keep a car a very long time, the battery cables might also eventually degrade, usually due to corrosion near the termination. You might not even notice it since the copper is covered by insulation. They last longer than a battery, so I have seen this with cables that are 15 years old or older, but it can happen.
Battery chemistry has also changed over the years. For most of my life, my lead-acid batteries would give me several days warning before failure as it would take a little bit longer to start the car each time.
Then I moved on to AGM batteries and now I might get one slow crank before the battery decides to give me the middle finger vis-a-vIs starting.
The AGMs seem to last longer, so there’s that going for them, I suppose, but they also cost more.
It’s not predictable. I have had both types of failures – sudden, and gradual. I once had a battery suddenly fail to turn over the engine for no reason except age, and it was showing no symptoms prior to that. Another time I had a new battery fail suddenly after just a year or so (it was replaced under warranty). The identical replacement worked fine for many years.
Recently I replaced a battery whose age I wasn’t sure of, but it was certainly many years, and that one was showing all the warning signs, cranking weakly if it had been sitting for too many days. The unpredictable nature of batteries is why I always keep a small but effective Li-ion battery pack on hand. It’s about the length and width of an iPhone 6 but about an inch thick, and this tiny thing can start not just a car engine but a large truck V8. It’s saved me a tow truck call a couple of times.
I vaguely recall hearing that “in olden days” when more aspects of the ignition process were mechanical, you would experience increasing difficulty as the battery lost power. The kinda thing where you would lean on the key and grind, hoping it would catch. But now that everything is electrical, once the battery is below a certain level, you don’t get ANY sign of life. So it can very much seem like, “yesterday it started with no problem, today it is dead as a doornail.”
Sorry for the ignorant wording - been a LONG time since I worked on a car, and electrical was always my weakest area.
The one I have is called a PowerAll. You can see a picture of it at the link below which gives you an idea of its size, and a pic of its accessories including the jump start cable. It also has two USB ports for charging phones etc.
It really does work very well, but I was hesitant to provide a link initially because there seem to be some weirdnesses around its marketing. It’s very hard to find, at least it was for me, but many counterfeits abound which may or may not be any good but probably aren’t. For instance, the “Shop” link in the article below goes to Amazon, but doesn’t turn up any. If you do get one make sure it’s genuine. Alternatively, auto parts & accessories stores carry similar Li-ion packs – check the reviews.
BTW, I don’t know what Consumer Reports says about it because it’s paywalled, but I saw another review saying that yes, it will definitely start a car or truck, but it doesn’t hold a charge very long. This is definitely not true for my older model – after a year of sitting idle, 4 of the 5 charge lights turn on, showing it has more than enough juice to do an engine start (as indeed it once did). I charge it once a year just to be safe.
They sell a few types of these, which can start a car without need for another car or having to be close enough to make short cables work. One brand is NOCO but there must be many. It will start a car, but you are s’posed to to drive it for the following half hour. It does not recondition batteries nor remove all the lead sulphate.
AGM (Absorbed Glass Mat) batteries in particular seem to exhibit a starkly binary life. They’re good or they’re dead, and they give zero warning of impending failure. No slow or hard starts, just fine for one trip, then stone dead ten minutes later.
Loose or corroded ground, battery or alternator connections will raise serious havoc in a low voltage high current charging system - just a few tenths of an ohm excess resistance will basically cripple the overall charging capability of the alternator. This is barely enough to measure, and so the only practical way to test for excessive resistance in the vehicle charging system is by means of the voltage drop test. It seems to feed on itself, a conventional wet cell/lead-acid or “maintenance free” battery will basically outgas on a constant basis, which leads to even more corrosion and excessive resistance.