Dry or Wet Battery

[Suzuki.swift1.3]

please Help. which battery type good for suzuki swift 1.3 auto. Dry or wet. Amaron or exide. Please help. 12v type

[Crosswind]

Between Amaron and Exide, I will ALWAYS choose Exide. I have enough experience with both brands.

My car (Ford Focus) has an unusual size battery. Only Amaron has that size in Sri Lanka. So I am stuck with Amaron. I have had enough bad experiences with Amaron batteries. The car was bought brand new in 2011 and the manufacturer's battery was replaced in 2012 due to a manufacturing fault. Since 2012 to 2016, I am on my third battery now (guess.the brand?).

1. One battery cracked from the housing without any reason and the acid leaked from the side. to the engine compartment. I got the battery replaced through warranty. But the acid that leaked burned some of the paint and some of the wires. Luckily, I have a habit of inspecting the engine bay closely once in a while. This could have caused the car to catch fire.

2. The second battery (replaced in 2013 Feb I think) died in 2016 May. Amaron claims they have a 5-year warranty on batteries. But that's a BIG SCAM. The warranty is just 2-years. After 2 years, what you get is a discount when you buy the next battery (something like 30% off the retail price of the next battery). They call that warranty! When you walk in to a battery shop to buy a new battery, you get the same discount. So their so-called 'warranty' is not a warranty, not even a discount!

and the bloody amaron battery for my car costs Rs. 18,000! 

I have always used Exide batteries with my other cars in the past and I had an issue only once where a brand new Exide battery died after about 3 weeks of purchase. I called up battmobile, got it tested and replaced within the hour. So I will not hesitate to recommend Exide over Amaron anytime.

 

[Rumesh88]

+1 to Crosswind's comments above. I am also biased towards wet type (or freely ventilated, flooded type etc) batteries for three reasons.

1. For a maintenance free battery you need to have your charging voltage optimized to local temperature conditions. They are good but for some car only, because charging voltage could be anything between 13.8V to 14.5V and you don't have a control over it.  

2. With a wet type battery you can observe things like if your acid level goes down quickly (sign of over charging), cell electrodes getting a white coating (sign of under charging) or if a cell begins to produce more bubbles than the others (sign of premature cell failure) etc if you are a keen observer. Whenever I have a choice I prefer not to be in the dark.

3. They are comparatively cheaper.

[Clark's son]

I also vote for exide

I had 2 very mildly leaking exide batteries in the past but they replaced without any hassle 

The main reason is the battmobile they don't ask the brand of battery before they come or force to switch to a new battery of their brand but I think it's our ethical obligation to buy from them because of their service.

And they are good batteries.

Less expensive than amaron 

And runs for more than 4 years in our vehicles

I use the maintenance free wet type 

 

Edited September 12, 2016 by Clark's son

[sathyajithj99]

I also bought an Ex#de battery for my car a year ago as Crosswind recommended.  It's doing good so far. Comparing with Am#ron,  it's cheaper and also got Batt mobile service.  

[Muditha420]

Defa Exide, chucked that damn Amron battery out and now running on an exide battery, have been using those from the 1st car till now. 

[anjulau78]

My Alto K10 is still running with factory fitted Exide Battery since 2012-Jan.

[Quiet]

wow 4 years

[Twin Turbo]

You're not driving the Star-ship Enterprise.

Any battery will do,. the conventional or "wet" will be cheaper and the only problem will be failing to top up the thing which make it fail prematurely

Cheers!.

[gayanath]

why don't you buy a wet maintenance free one?