Went out to start my beauty today and got the classic 'pining for the fjords' sounds that all our S-types make when the battery has seen it's final days. My local FLAPs had a suitable replacement in stock so we were back in business in no time.

My paperwork indicates that the dead battery was installed by the dealer in March 2006 making it 11 years and one month old. Not bad at all. My all time record is 13 years on a battery in my Corvette.

Can anybody beat this number?

 

Wow, congrats Mikey. I cannot even come close to that life span.

 

As far as I can determine mine went from 09Jul2003 to 22Oct2014 and the longest of any battery I have owned. The Panasonic battery in my 2001 Millenia S did 9years.

 

Please post all details, then I'm off to buy one!


Mike.

 

That's got to be a record!

Mine lasted over 7 years and then I got scared and just replaced it since I had never had a battery last that long before!

Putting them in the trunk is the key to long life.
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.
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Quite a while ago someone on the UK forum posted a similar age I think but definitely a great result.

 

OK Mikey and Six Rotors, you are both from Canada and not far away from each other, Perth Ontario and Toronto, so what is the secret? Do you keep your cars in a heated garage all winter with limited or no driving? Attached to a battery tender?
I know that heat will shorten the life of a battery. When I lived in AZ, batteries lasted less than 18 months in my daily driver and you both live in a much different climate but the cold can also wear down a battery without some protection. What is your secret?
There are few reasons for moving to Canada these days so maybe battery long life can be added to the list.

 

One of the secrets to long battery life is to check the individual cells at least quarterly and top up with water as needed. That typically helps keep all of our vehicles' batteries alive and well for at least 7 or 8 years here in the southeastern US. Plus, all of our vehicles are driven regularly and are never put into hibernation....

 

High temperatures are indeed (I understand) very bad for (lead acid) batteries.

Another is that quite a few cars have a current drain the owner doesn't realise is happening (until too late, if they notice then), that gradually causes damage.

Yet another is infrequent or short trips and no maintainer.

(Probably nothing new stated here!)

 

Not in our STR, but the XJ SV8: Just replaced the battery in that last month as it decided to die on me. Date on the original Jaguar battery was sometime from 2004, Sept if i remember right. When I saw that, I thought "wow, this has lasted a long time'. So, 09.2004-03.2017, not too bad. I guess batteries just last longer north of the 49th!

 

The car was my year-round driver up until 2012. Since 2013, it spends Nov-Apr in an unheated garage keeping company with the other summer toys, each hooked up to individual battery tenders. April is the change over month when the summer toys are brought out and the winter toys get put away.

I never checked the cell water levels once in all those years (bad me). No other special precautions or loving care.

The old battery was a Jag OEM unit, made in Spain. The new one is a basic AC Delco group 49A. I believe there's only 2 or 3 actual manufacturers these days, no idea who AC Delco gets them from.

One pleasant surprise was finding that both bolts for the battery hold down clamp came out with no fuss whatsoever. Given that the car was exposed to the worst of salt, slush and winter weather for 10 years, I had expected both bolts to be seized and to just snap. I then remember that I had removed the bolts many years ago to slobber them with grease after finding the spare tire hold down bolt almost seized.

Might be a good idea for others to see if their bolts are OK.

 

My Jaguars are not driven in winter, and do about 8k kms/year. Up until last winter I removed the batteries from the cars and bench stored them with occasional full charging. My 4 car garage is underground and is partially heated, temperature range, year round, is 10C-20C. Last year I bought some C-Tek 3300 Battery keepers and the batteries now stay in the cars. I check acid level once a year.

The original S-type battery was made in Germany by Varta. I replaced it with a Walmart(Johnson Controls) H8 battery.

My VDP has a 2014 Jaguar replacement battery (Varta made in Germany). It was replaced when the front power distribution box failed, before I bought the car.

 

I believe they changed the battery to black top. Was yours a white top? what company?

 

Replaced my battery 14-02-2017 with a Varta 100Ah Silver Dynamic.

Original one (28-01-2003) so lasted a bit more then 14 years

 

It's a new record!

 

. . . and just maybe, some of those OEM Varta batteries are older than we think. The month/year was stamped into the top of the battery post. My late MY07 S-Type had its original Varta stamped "6/06" in this way and when I questioned Jaguar, found that this was common practice. So much for JIT manufacturing.

Its failing in late 2014 was not catastrophic (8+yo), indeed it recovered once fully charged - but the false faults it had flagged caused so much aggro and its CCA was depleted sufficiently, I just dumped it and upgraded to the higher spec H4 Silver Varta . . . and an otherwise continuously plugged in smart charger or battery tender as Mikey and others have used for years.

Just been ranting on a nearby S-Type thread about all the work we put into "Battery 101 for S-Type Owners" in the FAQ Sticky here . . . but my biggest battery triumph is on our intermittently used ride-on mower, notorious for chewing through poorly maintained batteries. Instead of averaging only 2 years, and again using a continuously connected battery tending smart charger, our current battery is coming up to 5 years and still going strong.

Cheers and best wishes,

Ken