What battery to use in my daily driver recommendations

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Jarlaxle said:
Last WM battery I bought was $68. They're beating THAT?!
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They're beating it, but not by that much.
My Magnum needed a battery, the Wal-Mart version was $140 at Wal-mart, same battery was $68 at Rural King.
You have Rural King where you are? Check them out if you can.
 
MDchanic said:
Really? Cool. In New England, no less.

If I may ask a dumb question: How do you know?

– Eric
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I knew the owner and asked him. He said he wished it did, because his single biggest cost was water. This is an old car wash, built in probably the late 80s.
 
gunbunny said:
They're beating it, but not by that much.
My Magnum needed a battery, the Wal-Mart version was $140 at Wal-mart, same battery was $68 at Rural King.
You have Rural King where you are? Check them out if you can.
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No, no Rural King in this area. WM doesn't offer some battery sizes-I found that they only had the high-end battery in the odd size my Hyundai uses. (I wound up with a battery from AAA, which was actually cheaper despite being installed at my house.)
 
The ones I had the best luck are:
Wal-Mart
Autozone (their top of the line brand, at least Duralast Gold, not Econocraft )
Costco
Green top Interstate. If You can get to the smaller dealers around here in my neck of the woods. (some of the mom & pop Farm/Ranch equipment stores, U-Haul's around here have them)
- I actually saw one of the Les Schwab joints in Salt Lake City sell them, but that was the only one I saw.
Diehards are still kinda decent, but not the same as I remember.

The ones I got from Oreilly's were not the greatest.
Not sure about Napa or Advance auto.
 
slantsixdan said:
I remember when batteries had longer warranties than 30 months, and I remember when well-chosen batteries used to routinely outlast their warranties. But combine "Always The Low Price…ALWAYS" type of thinking, and laser focus on maximizing corporate profit this week without anything else mattering, and the ability to engineer and manufacture products to last not an hour longer than the warranty, and the buy-up of old-line, dependable brands by private-equity/hedge fund money-extraction outfits, all add up to enshittification, battery-style.

I also remember when Mac's Batteries in Oregon would make you a battery, with removable cell caps in accord with Scripture. But that was in 1995, and the past is a foreign country.

Now get the hell offa my lawn.
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GET OFF MY LAWN.jpg
 
Four cars, and when something dies, I head to Walmart for their Everstart. 3 year replacement, no cost. Only used the replacement deal once, without a problem. I've had one in my daily driver for 6 years. IMHO Walmart.
 
I guess I'm fortunate in that I still get "Good Guy" pricing on NAPA Legend batteries, being an ex-employee. I've never had a problem with any of mine, but if/when I ever do, I know the guys behind the counter well enough that the warranty restrictions will be seen as just "suggestions"....

(Hint: It never hurts to buy your local Counterman a 6 pack of his favorite adult beverage every now and then, guys!)
 

We buy a ton of "Napa Legend" batteries for work, the last one I bought was for my 01 Durango, it has the 2 year free replacement, I had it 26 months and was told I was SOL. Zero pro rate after the 2 years. So since they wanted me to buy another one at full price (minus the shop discount that work gets) I went back to farm and fleet and bought one there. Theirs are Johnson controls, and I know that if I bring back a bad battery having used 5 years of a "7 year battery" that I will get "some" credit towards a new one.
I did later buy a battery for my other Durango from a different Napa that's a franchise owned by the same guy that has the one we use at work/ but for some reason, this store has interstate, of which I'm not a fan of either/ but considering that that battery just happened to die on me the day of my mom's funeral and showed itself just after I helped load her casket into the hearse and went to start it to follow the hearse to the cemetery, (couldn't have been worse timing/ and this Napa happened to be right next door to the funeral home I kinda didn't have a choice.)
My wife and I hitched a ride to the cemetery (only about a mile and 1/2 down the road from the funeral home) after the cemetery part of the service I went back to Napa and bought a battery and stuck it in there, then carried on to the luncheon after that.
Had i not been in that kind of a bind I would have gone elsewhere, and "not" bought an interstate battery nor from Napa. The battery that died was the battery that was in there from when we had bought that Durango (I have 2 Durango's) 9 months prior and had started just fine 3 times earlier that day of the funeral, and has started fine every day since and I have done nothing more to the starting system or charging system on that Durango since.
Why that battery decided to die that day at that time I still don't understand.
 
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