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How To Perform a Battery Load Test to Check Battery Condition

Created on: 2014-02-04

How to test your battery to check it's condition. This video applies to most vehicles.

  1. step 1 :Testing Your Battery
    • Disconnect your negative and positive battery cable
    • Connect to the negative and positive terminal with a tester
    • Hold down the test button for ten seconds

While 1A Auto strives to make the information provided in this video as accurate as possible, it makes no claims, promises, or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness or applicability of the content. No information contained in this video shall create any expressed or implied warranty or guarantee of any particular result. All do-it-yourself projects entail some risk. It is the sole responsibility of the viewer to assume this risk. 1A Auto is not responsible or liable for any loss damage (including, but not limited to, actual, consequential, or punitive), liability, claim, or any other injury or cause related to or resulting from any information posted in this video.

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet.

Hi Everyone, I'm Don from 1AAuto.com. In this series of videos we're going to be focusing on vehicle diagnostic and maintenance tips. We hope that you find it helpful, and when you need parts for your car or truck, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

In this video, we're going to show how to load test your battery. The reason you might want to do this is if your battery or your car is sluggish to start in the morning, you hear that the starter is going and it's just not going as fast as it should, or maybe, occasionally you'll have to jump start your car. This is called a load and charging system tester. These are relatively cheap. It's not a bad tool to have in your garage.

Anyway, we're going to do it on this battery here, and you can see it's disconnected. I'm going to apply the positive terminal and then the negative terminal. What this is basically going to do is it's going to draw a load on the battery, and there's a little element in here that gets hot, and after 10 seconds you're going to be able to tell, based upon this gauge here, whether or not your battery is good or if it's got a bad cell in it, or it's just time to change it.

So what I'm going to do is go ahead and press the test button. I'm going to hold it down for about 10 seconds. I'm going to let go, and you can see that it's almost 13 volts. So, this battery is very good. You can feel here the heat from that element inside, and that's drawing the amperage out of the battery. So, now we'll go ahead and disconnect here, and disconnect here, and you see that we've a good battery.

Now, let's go ahead and do it on a battery that we know is bad. All right, we've got another battery here; we're going to repeat the procedure like we did on the other one. Hold down the button. This isn't looking good already. So, you can see that there's basically nothing left of this battery. So, this would obviously need to be replaced. This wouldn't even crank over your car.

We hope this video helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet. Please feel free to call us toll-free, 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the Internet and in person.

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Digital 12v Battery Analyzer

Battery Tester

Part Details:

  • Digital Display
  • Works on 200-1200 CCA Batteries
  • 12V Vehicle Powered
$57.95
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While 1A Auto strives to make the information provided in this video as accurate as possible, it makes no claims, promises, or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness or applicability of the content. No information contained in this video shall create any expressed or implied warranty or guarantee of any particular result. All do-it-yourself projects entail some risk. It is the sole responsibility of the viewer to assume this risk. 1A Auto is not responsible or liable for any loss damage (including, but not limited to, actual, consequential, or punitive), liability, claim, or any other injury or cause related to or resulting from any information posted in this video.

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