In spring of 2006 I got a free replacement battery (from Wally-World) for my 79 L82. The battery I replaced had been purchased in 2004 so it only lasted ~2 years, well within the 3 year free replacement period.

I just replaced the one I got last year. The shop that tried to charge it showed it only had 17% of the 770 CCA capacity and registered as "bad".

I have addressed some electrical things and haven't uncovered a short or any obvious problems. I recently rebuilt the starter and cleaned up all the hot and ground connections. If you remember from a previous post my hot lead was grounding out at the starter causing big popping sparks and sizzling when I tried to connect the negative terminal. This was short-lived (~5 seconds?) but strong and scary. Is this a battery killer??

I drive at least weekly and try to always get it up to highway speed...the voltmeter registers strong toward the high end of the normal operating range. The alternator was replaced just before I bought the car in Aug 2005.

I use a quick disconnect (on the negative terminal) after every ride to make sure I don't have a draw in case of unfound problems.

I used a very basic trickle charger on and off over the winter to keep it fully charged and it was registering no less than 12.6 volts on my multimeter. It was out of the car in my workshop for about 3 months.

Why did this battery die and what can I do (apart from driving everyday) to keep the replacement healthy? Would the big spark fiasco do it? It's not an issue so much because Wal-Mart will just fork over another if/when I kill this one, but I'd like to upgrade to a higher quality battery and don't want to kill it too. Thoughts?

Many thanks,
Steve

 

INTERSTATE!!!!!

thats all i can think of