There are a few consumer level devices that use predictive analysis and some folk like them, some don't.
I personally just buy a new pricey, high quality battery every 3 to 4 years and never have to worry about it. I have a friend that hunts and one time he got stranded in the remote hills of West Virginia because of a bad battery. He now changes his battery every two years to be safe. He has been doing this for about 15 years now and has never had another issue.
Of course, you can do all the "right" things and be as prepared as you can. But the unexpected will always happen, Nobody can stop the unexpected.
Any good well equipped shop should be able to do a load test.
Printed on your battery label will be "CCA".s
this stands for cold crank amps,
and when new and fully charged it should reach this reading,
if load tested and all it puts out is a significantly less figure then it.s on it's way out,
less than say 56% and I say renew it.
To be honest though maybe 1 in 10 do!
"But it still starts!" they say,
I either hear from them in 6 months or so or they never bring it back.
sales for the local fast fit!
I have found batteries last the approximate duration of the warranty give or take a month or two. A battery usually fails when the weather turns cold. Rule out corroded and loose battery cables and main ground from battery to engine block. If you want to avoid the "oh crap" moment replace your battery proactively near the end of it's warranty period.
It is very rare for a battery to be working fine one day and refuse to start the vehicle the next. Temperature drops can cause this (batteries work better when warm), but usually a battery will struggle to start the vehicle a little before it becomes too weak to turn the engine.
Replacing the battery at a regular interval as the others have said is one solution, but this is wasteful. Replacing a battery that still has some life is basically throwing away money. The better solution is to get an emergency charger, which is basically a pair of jumper cables attached to a spare car battery. This way, if you are ever in an emergency where your car won't start, you can jump it and get it started yourself. Emergency chargers stay charged for months, and they have a battery gauge on them so you can be assured that they will work when you them. When your car battery does eventually die, you'll be able to jump start the car and go to get your battery replaced. You won't have to worry about wasting the rest of the useful life of your battery.
Many auto parts stores will test your battery for free. The problem is most store employees don't know what there reading when they do a load test. The reading will give you the amp hour capacity left in the battery at time of testing. As the amp hour rating goes down it is getting closer to failure. You can also buy a load tester for your own use if you want to do it yourself.http://contentinfo.autozone.com/znetcs/p...
Sometimes there's no way to tell. I've had my car start just fine in the morning and then be dead at lunchtime and need to be replaced. Sometimes they give you warning, sometimes they don't.
Can somebody advice me how can I know the car's battery is going to die in the near future? So the user can take a precaution to not trap in an emergency by either replacing the battery in advance.
