My battery is about a year old and it keeps dying on me, my dad says that i don't drive enough to charge the battery. Iv tested my alternator (which works) and have been charging my battery through a battery charger for the weekends. I there any other way i can avoid this problem rather then just driving more. The battery is an autozone battery "duramax" i think (i dont think its the battery cause my old battery had the same problem.

thanks

 

How did you test your alt? Try pulling off the negative battery cable with the car running and see if the car still runs, thats pretty much a fail proof way to tell if your alt is bad or not. It sounds like it could be the alternator or maybe excessive drain from accessories while the car is off. Have you checked how much drain you are getting with the car off? How often/far do you drive your car on a weekly basis? Make sure you check the battery and alt connections also.

 

you mean its a duralast battery? its probably an accessory that is on all the time or something is draining power from it.

 

[QUOTE=St Try pulling off the negative battery cable with the car running [/QUOTE]

Never ever do this type of potentially destructive shade tree mechanic yahoo test. While it may have been a valid way to test the alternator on an old '70's G-M, you could induce a voltage spike that will cause you major headaches. As VTEC_PRODUCTION sais, it's probably due to some parasitic drain. (Trunk light on, aftermarket radio wired before the ignition, etc.)

 

perfectionist called that right....st jimmy i rarely disagree with you but this is the one instance i do

how long does the car sit? if you let a car sit anything more than 2 weeks without being started the battery should be removed

you may have some sort of parasytic drain problem, as the others stated

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Perfectionist &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

Never ever do this type of potentially destructive shade tree mechanic yahoo test. While it may have been a valid way to test the alternator on an old '70's G-M, you could induce a voltage spike that will cause you major headaches. As VTEC_PRODUCTION sais, it's probably due to some parasitic drain. (Trunk light on, aftermarket radio wired before the ignition, etc.)

</TD></TR></TABLE>

Never knew that. I've done it many times on many different cars when troubleshooting them, guess I'm just lucky. My negitive battery cable use to fall off all the time when driving and I wouldnt know it untill I tried starting my car again without a volatge spike problem so I guess that made me think it was an okay way to check the alternator, guess not, thanks for the FYI.

 

If the car sits for a day with out being driven it dies. Im also running a viper car alarm which is probably hogging up most of the power