Bosch, providing the right battery for your car (VIDEO)

KUALA LUMPUR, June 5 — What do you do when your car battery needs replacement?

Well, the easy way is to call your car service provider, whether it is the service centre of your car brand, or your friendly neighbourhood mechanic, and leave it all to the workshop or mechanic – you just pay the bill. We seem to rely on others most of the time, don’t we? Isn’t it about time we took charge? Maybe we think it’s too much of a dark art, and it’s something we think is too difficult to understand. How do we know we are getting the best deal?

Actually, the job of replacing a car battery is quite simple – here are the steps – first we have to disconnect the terminals, starting with the Negative Terminal (-), followed by the Positive (+) terminal, using a  small spanner, usually a size 10 or 12 spanner. The Negative terminal should be disconnected first and connected last at all times – doing so disconnects the entire electrical circuit, thus minimising the danger of short circuits.

Once the battery terminals are disconnected, we have to remove the battery from its base in the engine compartment, or in some cases, in the boot – to do so we need to remove the brackets that hold it in place. On most cars, there is a simple bracket that can be removed using a size 10 or 12 spanner. In some cases, the holding bracket could be at the base of the battery, and usually this bracket is also held in place by a size 10 or 12 nut.

Once the bracket is removed, take out the old battery and put the new battery in, and reverse the process – fix the brackets to hold the battery in place, then fix the wires, remembering that the positive terminal (marked with a (+) sign, should be affixed to the battery head that bears a corresponding (+) sign, and the negative or earth terminal to the battery head that bears the minus (-) sign.

Winding back a little, you would have needed to buy a replacement battery – if you are doing it on line, make sure you specify your vehicle make, model and if possible, give the battery model number – every letter and number on the battery signifies something – the correct battery number will tell the supplier what is the battery size, its output, type of battery head, and even the position of the terminals. There are many batteries that can fit, but you might have problems just because the battery heads are on the wrong side, or the battery may not have capacity, or the battery heads may be the wrong size.

According to Bosch, who also make and sell automotive batteries, there are three main categories of batteries. If you own one of the older (and much simpler, electrically) cars, then you probably only require the Bosch SM Mega Power battery. With more modern cars that have a lot of electrical accessories that also consume electricity, then you might want to consider the SM Mega Power Silver series. The third category would be cars that have the START-STOP feature – wherein the engine will shut down when you are stopped at a traffic light, and fire up again when you take your foot off the brakes – this Start-Stop system also involves many other systems within the car, and the demand n the battery can be huge – putting in the wrong battery can result in premature failure of the vehicle. In this case, Bosch recommends the ST Hightec AGM battery range.

Bosch have been making automotive batteries for a long time, but in the Malaysian market, it is  relatively new, if you consider the long-established brands that we have been used to, but being the inventor of the START-STOP system, Bosch is very well versed with the demands of the electrical system.

I actually had a test battery fitted onto my six-year old VW Golf on 22 August 2016. How does one test a battery? The usual life of a battery is between one to two years, depending on how you use it. For me, the battery in the Golf is crucial – this car is hardly used – as a case in point, between 2013 to 2016, the Golf has done less than 5,000 kilometres – which means that it sits in the porch most of the time, neglected. The battery in such a car would have to be very good – it would have to be able hold its charge for a long period so as to be able to start the car at any time. So far so good.