8 year battery - normal or fluke?

Had to replace the original battery on my '98 Stratus after 150K
miles. Was I lucky it lasted so long, or is this now considered normal
lifetime?

 

On an American vehicle, it is much better than average.Some Japanese
batteries make 8 years with some regularity.
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"normal" lifetime is closer to 4 years. I'd say you probably live in a
battery-friendly climate and drive the car regularly...

 

I just last week replaced the original equipment battery on my '99 LHS.

 

The original battery on my 1998 Stratus lasted 7 years. The Autozone
replacement *Duralast* in my 1990 Dodge Spirit is going on 9 years.

It used to be that 4 to 5 years was the max for original batteries.

-Kirk Matheson

 

Depends on climate and a lot of other things. I think behavior like
that wasn't uncommon when I was in Seattle; it would be unheard of for
me now in the desert.

 

Thanks to all who replied. So it's not such a rare thing then,
provided the climate is not extreme. Well, since the car has been living
between Baltimore and New York, I guess that's the case, and battery
life of 6 to 9 years is not surprising.
Joe, are you saying that heat is detrimental to batteries in the
long run? I was thinking cold is bad just for the moment (decreased
capacity only while it's cold), but didn't know what effect heat has (if
any).

 

My '95 Concord battery lasted 5 yrs., the typical battery life span for
me over many years of driving.
It's replacement is still going strong, at 6 yrs. I bought a much
better replacement for the original, as large a capacity battery as the
holder would take. Original batteries are usually a fairly small size.

My wife's Sebring battery is soon 5 yrs., but since she drained it to
nothing twice due to leaving the trunk open, I don't expect much from it.
The Sebring trunk doesn't pop up when unlocked and the driver warning is
very poor- the CD player msg panel says "deck"!
We won't know till the end if it even looks clean on top, it's hidden in
front of the left front wheel. An ugly location for a battery, but
better that those cars that have it in the trunk.
I had 3 VW Beetles and never did like having the battery under the rear
seat. I occasionally could smell fumes from those batteries.

Letting a battery go dead and leaving it dead for some time is not the
best for it's life. When we bought a '97 Daytona it had been sitting in
the dealers back lot and the battery was very dead. I requested a new
battery and caught them not replacing the dead one as I had identified
it. Their replacement "new" only lasted 4 yrs, so I expect they put
another drained one in it.

 

Both heat and cold are very hard on batteries. I would suspect that 4-5
years is still pretty much the rule for OEM batteries and that you got one
of the good ones.

 

Heat definitely reduces battery life. I googled around for a while
and found http://www.mpoweruk.com/life.htm#arrhenius which shows the
effect pretty graphically (I don't know what a "tubular ironclad"
lead-acid bettery is, and it's pretty clearly either something very
different from what we put in our cars or else the X-axis should be
labeled in months rather than years, but the graph shows the
qualitative effect anyway).

 

I always ripped the back seat out and put in a big American car
battery in a plastic vented hot rod battery box.

The trunk is the best place for a battery IMO.

 

When the battery on my '49 VW died in Zambia, I crank started it for a
month or so until the battery on the big Leyland lorry died. It had
one bad cell on the one end, so I hacksawed the post off, and fastened
it to the center cell link so I had a good 6 volt battery. Pulled out
the back seat and stuffed THAT in it's place. That monster must have
weighed pretty durn close to 100 lbs!!

Never had any cranking problems from then on -------

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I am still running the original battery in my 97 Intrepid. Climate is South
Eastern Ontario so it does see the cold!
Mark

 

Here in southern Nevada battery life is short. Winter parking up in
the mountains for snowshoeing drop the battery temp to the 30°'s and
the summers in town take it up into the 110°+ range.
I got 2 years max on OEM batteries.