| twopu-
I honestly don't think you'd have much trouble getting the cheaper battery as long as it hasn't been sitting on the shelf for more than half a year and as long as you keep the receipt (some places seem to require the receipt for warranty, while others simply rely on the heat stamped date code). Just make sure you keep the terminals clean and try not to leave it discharged for long periods at a time. You could actually take that extra $25 you save and buy an automatic trickle charger to keep the battery topped off and warmed up during the winter time.
As for testing batteries, the only true way to test a battery is after it has been fully charged, which at my old job meant hooking it up to a manual charger at around 4 amps for however long it took for each cell's hydrometer reading to show 1.28 and for overall voltage to be 12.85V (up to 2 days on larger group 65 or 78s). Then, it was put on the load tester to see if it was handling OEM CCA specs and if any internal straps were broken. Of course, this takes a lot of time, so many places that service batteries will use a handheld computer tester or put it on a quick 1 hour charge - both of which are totally useless unless the battery comes in fully charged. |