I have a 2005 Toyota Sienna with 109,000 miles. My battery has a date of 10/2019 and it starts right up. I check my battery often with my tester and it says good. This year I bought a battery tender so I can trickle my battery when not in use and this whole winter of 2022 has been nothing but in the teens. I plug my van every night in these frigid temps.
I was wondering what does the frigid cold do to car batteries?
Cars that are left parked without a trickle and not turned on for a few days...can that kill the battery and prevent them from starting?
On the average, a car without a trickle charge on a good battery when the weather is below 32 and above 0 degrees, how often should one start their car and for how long?
The battery generates electricity by reacting plates of lead and 30% sulfuric acid to produce lead sulfate and free electrons. They use lead dioxide as their positive plate, pure lead as the negative and sulfuric acid in between. When it gets really cold outside, the sulfuric acid doesn't flow as well, which slows the chemical reaction down. In order to keep generating electricity, fresh sulfuric acid molecules need to be able to get to the lead plate as quickly as possible. Your battery's built with a spare capacity to allow for cold use, but the pure lead slowly forms a permanent lead sulfate layer, in use or not. This increases electrical resistance inside the battery and gradually decreases the available voltage/ power output. Alternators and trickle chargers reverse the chemical reaction when they charge the battery, but they aren't perfect, which is why your battery eventually goes bad, no matter how well you maintain its charge.
Cold weather puts higher strain on the battery, because everything in the engine is tighter fitting the colder it gets. The starter has to work harder, requiring more current, Oil gets thicker, even the electrical resistance in the wiring is higher. Once the battery goes past a certain point, it'll start fine in warm weather, but those parasitic sources of resistance add up quickly in the cold.
Newer batteries aren't affected by cold as much as old ones, but they still are. Listen to your starter when it's frigid cold and when it's warm, brand new battery or not. The starter turns faster when it's warmer because the chemical reaction is happening faster.
I was wondering what does the frigid cold do to car batteries?
Flooded lead acid batteries are chemical storage. Chemical reactions produce electric current. Cold (which is lack of heat energy) makes reactions happens slower. (think of washing your clothes in cold water). The molecules physically need to move from one place to another for your battery to work.
can that kill the battery
No. The battery isn't being "killed". It's just works slower. Just like humans do in the cold. It will also charge slower.
If you warm it up, it'll work perfectly fine.
Thank You. I trickle my car every night when it's freezing cold and yes, the car starts faster. Or at least it starts the same as it's warm...Right away, unlike my friends that don't trickle, you'll hear longer noises as the vehicle struggles to start. I'm aware that a trickle won't make the battery last forever, but I guess it maintains it so that it has enough power to start efficiently in warm and cold weather for at least the life of the battery about 5 years or so?
It is good to keep your battery connected to a trickle charger during cold weather. A fully charged healthy battery will suffer no frost damage even at -30 degrees Centigrade, so especially when the weather is cold it makes perfect sense to keep your battery at full charge.
If you have the choice, better not leave your car parked without a battery charger connected for several days during cold weather, and if you have to - just disconnect the battery.
A not-fully charged battery, during cold weather, can be damaged both by frost (the electrolyte of such a battery freezes to ice at higher temperatures), AND by the alternator, which, upon successful startup, will attempt charging the battery with high current, while a cold battery will not be ready to accept such an amperage, and will degrade fast.
If you care about your car and live in cold climate, consider installing some sort of a pre-start engine heater. Even a primitive wall outlet-powered electric heating plate glued to the oil pan will prolong the life of your engine significantly, not even talking of Webasto-type coolant heaters.
Normally you should avoid starting your car during cold weather, when you do not really need to drive - cold weather stresses everything in the car, and a cold start during cold weather is what stresses the motor most of all.
