New Member & Battery Experience

[CRD28AUTO]

Hi guys & gals. First time owner of a Chrysler. Brought a 2007 Grand Voyager Executive CRD auto 84’000 miles 4 months ago. Learnt a lot from the forum before joining today. Already done the button mod. Thanks leedsman. Really enjoying ownership so far. Nice big barge to drive. When I brought the car it had a Exide EB741 battery on (unknown age but looked old), worked fine till it got cold. Decided to buy a RedTop. Mistake. Yes it had great cranking power, but drained heavily when not used for a couple of days. I borrowed a high tech amp meter which recorded over a long weekend of no use. Car was only drawing minimal ma consistently. Yet my battery tester had it down to 40% charge. When I charge the RedTop up to 100% and leave disconnected, it retains charge. Apparently the self discharge when connected is common on these red tops. Quality is not what they used to be. In the end gave up and brought a Advanced 096R XD battery for £80 delivered. This battery is perfect. No self discharge and plenty of power to spin the crd over on cold mornings. Volt meter reads 12.8v after leaving all weekend. Result. Sorry for the long first post, but wanted to share my experience. I like to do my own servicing and repairs, and pretty handy with electrics and fault finding on management systems. Hope I can contribute to the forum as much as it’s helped me already. Paul.

[QinteQ]

Welcome to the forum CRD28AUTO. Infrequent [lifestyle] (charge rate)] use plugues UK CRD-GV's.100% agree with your comment on RedTop's "Quality is not what they used to be" Virgin lead use is heavily penalised by the EU, similarly they legislated for all batteries to contain a % of scrapyard lead. Green policy I suppose.

[QinteQ]

Sorry DUP, damn VMmedia.

 

REACH rules directive.

 

Lead batteries are already 99% recycled in Europe – one of the highest recycling rates of any product. And advanced lead batteries are used to store renewable energy generated by wind and solar. Day-to-day lead batteries support emergency back-up power in hospitals, mobile phone networks and computer servers which support the internet.

 

The claim is that secondary smelting is of the same high quality as virgin lead. Fake news? industry / EU spin marketing - take your choice. I do clearly recall the outcry about 6 months after the 1st release of spirals claiming they reduced the spec quality on SLI's and made comment on this forum at that time.

Edited February 2, 2020 by QinteQ

[oldginger]

Hi, only just picked up this topic. I read lots of topics during my research into replacing the battery that came with my GV. Where I live is a very well known battery supplier and everyone I consulted pointed me that way. Without hesitation he recommended a red top and in the time he has sold them he has not had any complaints. It has performed very well and my trips are usually local & sometimes days apart. I bought my battery back in early November so a few cold spells and my very old Exide battery tester shows all's well. I will let the forum know the minute there's any change. I think I bought my car around the same time as you, broke all the rules, but touch wood I seem to have done well. There are obviously common niggles but the forum sure helps. A couple of Austin Maxi's have come up lately but she who must be obeyed says " your too old to mess with cars" so "NO". Soooo easy to work on Issigonis the working mans designer. Love the Voyager though. All the best.