![]() ![]() Is AutoZone Battery Test Accurate?Īccording to their website, the company’s battery test is supposed to be accurate. You can wait and buy later but do not make it too much later if you want your car to start each and every time someone in your family drives it. There is no obligation for you to buy a new battery if the test shows yours is on its way out. It is worth getting an idea of the condition of your battery even if you do not buy a new one. The employees should be parts specialists and know what they are doing. Having a little peace of mind is worth the effort and the drive to the closest AutoZone shop near you. The good part of the test is that it is free. ![]() Yes, the company does test your battery for you. Then if you want the location of the closest AutoZone shop, scroll to the bottom of the web page and look for the words AutoZone locations and click on it. The good thing about AutoZone’s repair shop finder is that it finds actual repair shops near you no matter who owns them. Or you can just click here to get to that web page. Once on that page put in your address and in a few seconds, the screen provides you with your results. All you have to do is go to their website, click on the menu button and scroll down till you see find a repair shop and click on it. If you do not know such men and do not know where there are repair shops near you, Auto Zone makes it easy for you. You can just ask them for directions to the one they recommend. For those men who work on their cars or have the work done, they already know where the best mechanics and repair shops are. On some cars ECU has digital comunication with alternator's charging regulator.This is not going to be difficult. ECU knows battery voltage with much better accuracy compared to what you measure on the cig.lighter. It shows you some stuff read by digital bus from the Engine Control Unit (ECU). This means you should make additional wiring just for the voltmeter.Īnother solution for a modern car (over 2000's) is to buy an OBD display. This kind of fault can be seen by measuring battery voltage directly on its terminals. Although rare, I recently had both of these problems on my Ford Mondeo MK3 equipped with Visteon alternator. Of course there are cases where alternator can charge poorly and the actual battery voltage is 13.2-13.6V or can overcharge (more than 15V) but it happens quite rare. If your alternator fails and stops charging you will read values of about 11-11.5V or less. If you see anything over 12V-12.5V it charges and in most cases it charges OK. ![]() The main purpose of such a meter is to know does you alternator charge or not. I don't know the exact product, but most chinese meters may have difference of about +/-0.3V. Second - you can't be sure of this meter's accuracy. Any load (like stereo, GPS, dashboard illumination, etc.) drops a bit the voltage you will read on the cigarette lighter jack. There are ground losses thorough car's chassis, losses of "positive" as it goes through couple of relays, fuses and wiring. Sidenote, I use one in my car due to alternator issues and it's as accurate as my free harbor freight multimeter.įirst of all the voltage at cigarette lighter jack is always somewhat less than actual voltage on battery terminals. For the most part, this may mean it's off by a fraction of a volt. But the lower the quality of the item, the more likely that the resistor is not a very precise, and the Analog to Digital converter in the microcontroller they used will not be very accurate. It will have a resistor divider to bring the voltage down to the microcontroller voltage level. As mentioned, 13.7 is a typical voltage for a car under load while the alternator is running.Īs to the accuracy though, keep in mind that the trinket you got is a cheaply made mass produced item. In any case, aside from the negligible voltage drop across the fuse and wiring, is an accurate measuring point for the voltage in the car. Sometimes it is connected through the main switched power relay. A car cigarette lighter or 12V power outlet in a car is, like most everything else, connected directly to the battery positive/alternator output, through a fuse (typically 10 Amp). ![]()
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