How to find out age of battery

**Hillbilly** · 31-12-2016, 06:23 PM

Had a new battery installed in October.
Dont use the car a lot but have been on a few 100k trips and one 1000k trip since fitting it.

Went to start it last week and it was flat. Removed the PMP for the dashcams as thought it might be hanging on a bit long.

Put Ctek 7.0 on and it took over 24 hours to fully charge

Havent used it for 10 days and today it only just started and no more.

Am not very happy as original battery started car after 49 days holiday and was two years old then.

Wondering if VW had this one in stock too long

No codes stamped in casing that I can see.

Ideas anyone Thanks

**Bryn23** · 01-01-2017, 09:14 AM

I found this on piston head Way to check Varta battery date? - Page 1 - Home Mechanics - PistonHeads

Could be worth checking the neg pole for the 4 digit number, if it is even there.

The colour coding pdf in the link is useless as the year colour only goes to 2011.

I couldn't find more info from Varta.

I'd be taking the battery back for a replacement, as it sounds like its not holding a reasonable charge.

**Hillbilly** · 01-01-2017, 09:40 AM

Originally Posted by Bryn23

I found this on piston head Way to check Varta battery date? - Page 1 - Home Mechanics - PistonHeads

Could be worth checking the neg pole for the 4 digit number, if it is even there.

The colour coding pdf in the link is useless as the year colour only goes to 2011.

I couldn't find more info from Varta.

I'd be taking the battery back for a replacement, as it sounds like its not holding a reasonable charge.

Thanks for that found the code on the neg terminal under the cover over it.

Is 08 15 which I presume is Aug 2015 which means the battery was 14 months old when installed,

Will be jumping up and down on Tuesday about that.

**Bryn23** · 01-01-2017, 11:44 AM

No worries,

its good to know that the code is there on AU delivered Varta batteries, it should help everyone workout the build date.

Suppling at 14 month old battery is not good, the discharge over that time frame would have been bad for the battery.

They should change it over under warranty, i'd hope that they supply a fresh battery, at least you can check that with the code.

**Hillbilly** · 11-01-2017, 07:51 PM

Ok took car in they said they checked battery and its within specs. However in the days after I put the Ctek on it it dropped from a full charge to just over 11 volts with car sitting in the garage and not touched.

It barely started after 8 days of not being used.

Question How does a dealer check the battery I would have thought the old load test would be the best way.

Brought it home and took reading 12.8v Went for a 180k drive yesterday and it was 12.6 when I got home Tonight its 12.6 still

Have I got reason to be unhappy