Tips from the workshop: checking your battery

What is correct voltage?

You could conduct a simple test with a Digital Multimeter to confirm the voltage. A good, modern 12-volt battery should sit at around 12.8V when it is fully charged. Believe it or not, 11.8V is considered ‘electrically discharged’ and although it may start the vehicle, the control units will not function properly and could cause warning lights and what we call ‘ghost fault codes’ for errors with the vehicle that aren’t there at all – they magically go away when the battery charges up.

Keep it clean

Another simple but often overlooked preventative maintenance procedure would be to clean the battery terminals and grease them with a special battery terminal grease – this prevents moisture and corrosion from forming on the battery terminals, which again, would cause electrical issues with the vehicle.

Charge it up

If the vehicle is going to be stood down from work for a lengthy period, it would be worth investing in a ‘smart-charge’ battery charger. These newer types of battery chargers can pulse the charge into the battery, which doesn’t damage the battery cells like older chargers used to. They also have a charge monitoring software in them to automatically turn off and back on if the cells charge or discharge.