Is my battery cactus?

[Trevor loves holden.]

Yip a multimeter will not be 100% accurate, a load tester is the correct way to do it as you type in the cca of the battery, even though a multimeter is reading 10.4 it only has a thousand of second to log it, it maybe as low as 8v. Charge the battery then go and get it tested.

 

[TJohn]

Will do. Thanks guys. Will report back

 

[PlenumBiscuit]

Doesnt police mode list the voltage?

 

[krusing]

No, Police mode is usually the Digital Display activated on the Dash, and has no relevance to battery voltage.

If you go through the engineering menu's it will display the Voltage, not necessarily the Battery voltage, its most likely the system voltage,
The quick and easiest way to test a battery voltage is to put a load on it,
Use a Multi-meter and connect it to your battery,
with the motor NOT running,
turn the head lights on, if its holding at approx 12volts,
It appears to be ok,
If it drop rapidly, I would say its cactus.

 

[TJohn]

Didn't get to the battery place yet, but connected multimeter to battery. 12.69.
Turned headlights on. 12.06. Headlights off, back to 12.69.
Engine off while doing it, of course.
That sound about right?

 

[vc commodore]

Load testing is the only sure fire way to know whether the battery is cactus or not.

I had a 3 month old battery in my commodore, which checked out fine, with a multimetre....Used the load tester on it and it was cactus....The place I bought the battery from, also performed a load test on it, to satisfy warranty conditions and it also came up the same.

So my advise, forget the multimetre stuff and get it load tested, otherwise you're wasting your time

 

[TJohn]

Yeah, I was startin' to think that as well, had to be a reason, and all the advice point's to that
At least I know that's prolly it.
Many thanks guys, I know jack about electrics, duh.
Any recommendations about a decent battery to buy for these things?
This one's a supercharge cca600, can I go any bigger or better?
The load tester guy is gunna try to sell me his special, I want to be ready for him.

 

[losh1971]

A few years back Supercharge were a pretty decent product. I'm not up with the quality of them these days. AC Delco is a good one to get. Century are probably fairly average and I wouldn't recommend.

 

[TJohn]

Thank you

 

[vc commodore]

A few years back Supercharge were a pretty decent product. I'm not up with the quality of them these days. AC Delco is a good one to get. Century are probably fairly average and I wouldn't recommend.

What issues have you struck with Century batteries? I'm coming upto 2 years since I put a newie in my commodore...

I will admit, the first one I had lasted 3 months before it started to crap itself, but had no issues with a warranty claim