Decided to treat the Alfa to a new battery today. In line with recent comments on other threads there were signs last winter it was nearing replacement and there is no time I walk to the car when a non-start is acceptable.
I use Eurocarparts a lot so looked for a suitable battery on their website. List apparently £92.77, their discounted price £79.70. Remembered they emailed me the other day and looked back to find a battery offer 15% off. Applying that code reduced it to £67.32.
Just thought I'd run it past Ebay despite the fact that I really wanted it tomorrow and no Ebay seller could deliver until Mon/Tues earliest.
However turns out Eurocarparts have an Ebay shop and you are able to buy on Ebay, pay with Paypal then collect from store which is what I've done.
How much... only £53.49 for exactly the same battery. Talk about multi level pricing and the customer needing to be aware of all options to get the best deal.
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>>£53.49 for exactly the same battery
Would you adam and eve it hey! .. I filled in one of their feedback thingies when I bought a cabin filter from them.
They gave me 25% orf my next purchase so I thought well, I could do with a new battery, like.
Turns out I can't use that discount code - while they've got a sale on :)
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Have a look on CarParts4Less, Euro Car Parts online only division. The prices on there are normally cheaper than the Euro Car Parts website, and the stuff is delivered to your door free of charge too. Great if you are not in a rush for parts.
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Just checked out Euro Car Parts + CarParts4Less + eBay + The Battery Shop.
An Exide (lead/acid) EA654 for my Forester comes out at about £75, except from Euro Car Parts who want £105.
I could use the 25% discount code they gave me when I filled out their feedback thingy, which would bring the price down to roughly what the other bods want :)
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Yes, I found all sorts of variations when I was looking at battery prices. At the time I bought the Bosch S4 for the Focus, they were on offer at Eurocar Parts for around £40, so I ordered one on-line and collected next day from the store - about 300yds away from our house. A few days later, the price had gone up to around £52.
A week or so later, looking at batteries for the Astra, the (bigger) S4, appropriate to the Astra, was about £60 at Eurocar Parts on-line, but a few quid cheaper if you purchased via their e-bay shop - so I ordered one. According to the rules, you couldn't pick it up from the shop, and it would be a 3-day delivery. Next day I received notification that it was on its way - and it was delivered 31hrs after placing the order.
If you suspect that it's nearing the time to replace the battery, then it might be a good idea to get it as soon as an offer looks reasonable. You can bet your bottom dollar that it the battery fails suddenly, it will be top price for a replacement from all suppliers and a week's delivery!
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I ended up buying my battery from a seller on eBay, I wanted to replace my old Banner battery with the same make but the only seller seemed to be on eBay, it was priced at £82 but it was also listed with 'make me an offer' so I put in £75 and they accepted it (Banner Power Bull). The next surprise was that the seller was based in Germany but with great efficiency it was on my door-step 36 hours later and has made a big difference in the mornings.
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>> I ended up buying my battery from a seller on eBay, I wanted to replace
>> my old Banner battery with the same make
Why? is there something special about that make?
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No I guess not but the original one had given me good service and lasted me 7 years so I thought I'd stick with the same brand and a bit of research meant I found out that they were a good OE brand.
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gsfcarparts.com sell Banner Starting Bull batteries.
£75 for my Forester, same price as an Exide or Bosch jobbie.
Wouldn't mind an AGM (Absorbent Glass Mat) battery but avez vous seen the price of them!!
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I want whatever Volvo put as OE fit on their cars. My S60 was 10 years old, had 150,000 miles on the clock, and was still on its original battery when I sold it. This old battery still belted the engine over even on the coldest of mornings.
I changed the original on the Golf 2 years ago at 8 years and 120,000 miles as it was getting sluggish in the mornings. Bought a Bosch S4 from ECP and paid about £60 IIRC. Amusingly the battery I removed sat in my garage for about 12 months and then was given to a mate as he was scrapping a Frontera that had sat in his garden for ages. He had long since re-deployed its battery for other uses, and he needed any old battery to stick on it in order to scrap it as a complete car. Not only did this fit, but it actually started the car after all that time! Maybe I was hasty in my decision to replace it :-)
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It's definitely not a bad idea to shop around. I see that gsfcarparts are asking £93.49 for the same 075 Bosch S4 (for the Astra) that I paid £57.54 for with Eurocarparts [via Amazon, not e-bay as I mistakenly stated earlier].
Similarly, gsf ask £71.32 for the equivalent Focus battery; Eurocarparts cost £40.76.
I can't see any reference in the 'Banner' literature that says the battery is a cadmium or silver/cadmium type.
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Some info here, an Austrian brand: www.bannerbgb.co.uk/
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They are sold as a slightly cheaper battery alongside Varta and Bosch in Germany.
It sounds like the UK is the place to buy your car battery. Look at some of these prices:
www.atu.de/shop/kategorie/Batterien-w5722/Auto-Batterien_w5723/
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After a bit of digging around on the Banner website I found that for their Running Bull AGM and Power Bull batteries they are Ca/Ca and use "Ca alloy for positive and negative grid (+Ag +Sn)".
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V/expensive those AGM jobbies.
It seems to me that whether you get a Bosch/Varta/Banner, or my personal preference of an Exide, they'll all cut the mustard, as it were.
Auto Express carried out a car battery test a few years ago, and they chose the Exide jobbie as the winner.
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"I can't see any reference in the 'Banner' literature that says the battery is a cadmium or silver/cadmium type."
Oops - I meant calcium, not cadmium …….. doh!
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I'm sure I read somewhere that calcium/silver car batteries are more likely to just die on you than the common or garden batteries of yesteryear, like the one in my Forester.
I actually can't ever recall having a battery go nipples up on me TBH, they've always just become weaker and weaker over time.
I wouldn't buy a calcium/silver for my car - unless the car manufacturer specified it.
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"I'm sure I read somewhere that calcium/silver car batteries are more likely to just die on you than the common or garden batteries of yesteryear,"
That could be ………..but the calcium battery on the Focus (as specified by Ford) was still starting the car at 11.3 years old; it might have got through another winter, for all I know. I only changed it because I wimped out ;-)
I have to admit, I'm not certain if a calcium type is actually specified for the Astra but anyway, that's what it's going to get!
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>>was still starting the car at 11.3 years old
Had your monies worth then I guess.
>>I'm not certain if a calcium type is actually specified for the Astra but anyway, that's what it's going to get!
Gorn orf the idea of a cadmium battery alright already.
:}
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My new battery is on now and it shows up how you get accustomed to a slightly sluggish start... spins much quicker with the new one.
The old one was a Motaquip and only 7yrs old but it was the wrong fitment and 20% below the advised CCA figure.
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"Gorn orf the idea of a cadmium battery alright already."
Yeah - I was getting my nickel/cadmiums mixed up with my silver/calciums - and just don't mention lithium/ions. It's many years since I scraped A-level chemistry!
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Some interesting info about batteries here: www.mpoweruk.com/leadacid.htm
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"Some interesting info about batteries here……………….."
That's going to take a bit of digesting - thanks for the link. Now all I need is a 'handy quick-reference guide' to looking after the various types - you don't have a link to one of those, do you? ;-)
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Eh, fraid not but ... how's about this then, many Jap cars come fitted with Yuasa as OE, they are very good batteries from my experience .. Halfords do one for my Forester @ £115 (Yuasa Silver 5000)
The same battery, from thebatteryshop.co.uk = £70 + del.
(*_*)
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I had to get a battery for the wife's Golf last week. The RAC bloke who came to start the car wanted £120 for a battery. I got one from ECP for £70.
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How many prices for same battery at Eurocarparts? - Dog
