Camlobe

Sorry, wino, but that may not have been an adequate answer; my comment about their info is based on looking at their site ~5 years ago, and I can't remember what exactly I looked at, at the time- probably something to do with Calcium and non-Calcium, but I'm not sure (and I'm not really prepared to dig around their site generally for other problems, unless it directly affects something I am considering here and now). It is a shame, as I think they know their stuff, just have been a bit careless in the writing. In any case, I think there has been some thread drift and that we are probably no longer doing anything to help the OP. If you want to continue the discussion about technical battery matters, a new thread may be indicated?

OK, that was a bit of a Rabbit Hole! Following off on a side passage, I had never heard of Lead Crystal batteries: (https://greenrhino-energy.com/crystal-batteries/). They look interesting, but expensive (over life, they list the lowest cost of ownership, but they list Lead Acid as having a 2-3 year life, which isn't really representative of anything but the absolute cheapest, and I'd bet the price that they've used isn't for the cheapest). (There is also another table here, which might be slightly fairer about cost...still using unrealistic numbers for 'good' Lead Acids, though) More substantively: "AGM has very low internal resistance, is capable to deliver high currents on demand and offers a relatively long service life, even when deep cycled." Some AGM batteries are specialist at deep discharge, some aren't. Low internal resistance is certainly possible, but is a function of geometry, so just because a battery is AGM doesn't necessarily mean low IR. (Incidentally, I once killed supervised the killing of a set of Optima AGM batteries in a lab application in about a year. Now they were, occasionally, in deep cycle mode, but I was disappointed. 'Elf and safe knees would only allow leak-proof, in that circumstance.) "AGM batteries are less prone to sulfation" - possibly true, Lead-Calcium are reputed more prone to sulfation, and it is unclear which they mean. Note that the 'spider diagram' comparison is with Gel cells, and that isn't really relevant here. "AGM is the preferred battery for upscale motorcycles." Not totally. They may have got away with "AGM is the preferred battery for OEM fitting in upscale motorcycles.", but Lithium has quite a following in the aftermarket, and is generally seen as the most desirable as they are lighter. Whether the weight saving causes any discernible difference is questionable. "AGM is making inroads into the start-stop function of cars. The classic flooded type is simply not robust enough" Well, fair enough really, but mentioning EFB would have made a fairer comparison. "AGM and other sealed batteries do not like heat and should be installed away from the engine compartment. Manufacturers recommend halting charge if the battery core reaches 49°C (120°F)." That may be true, but they are regarded as suitable for engine compartment use, with appropriate measures. The controller has to limit charging based on temperature (which it doesn't know, but at which it can make an educated guess, bearing in mind recent charge history) I have to say i was a little disappointed with this considering they have 'University' in the name, but maybe I shouldn't be.

Lead? Lead is one of the densest metals and has been banned from everywhere else, because of its toxic potential. Weight is one of the advantages touted for Lead-Calcium (but I can't remember ever seeing the spec of a Lead-Calcium battery and thinking 'that's saved half a kilo', so there can't be that much in it, in practice), That Lead is still allowed for car batteries is due to a deliberate exception in the EU Law. If they hadn't done that, we'd all have been scrabbling around for Lithium. and there probably isn't enough Lithium mining and purification capacity in the world, Would have resulted in lighter batteries, though. @Wino - I'll have a look at that Battery University page later. I have seen frankly dubious info from them before, so I am interested.

It can be, but it can also be something like engine mounts. If the engine moves or squirms around as you take off, that can be quite unpleasant. Corner exit is almost certainly the well known 'in roll, one wheel gets decreased vertical load, and traction for that wheel rapidly decreases' issue. While that can be made worse by almost anything else, tyre compound is one of those issues (as are bound and rebound rates, wheel and tyre mass, effective spring rates, tyre pressure, engine mounts - basically anything, really),

Firstly, I wouldn't be adventurous enough to try it on a road car, at least one I hadn't tried pretty thoroughly by throwing it about on a test track first. You'll probably say I just a bit too conservative, but keep in mind that's my opinion. Secondly, you will probably find it does have a positive effect, but quite a limited one. On rough roads, if you have a real washboard surface, it will have an effect, but then the shocks are likely to have a much bigger effect (it would be much bigger, if you had complete freedom with shock settings, but with real world constraints, you almost certainly don't, so I'm removing the word 'much'). Here's the problem - while playing with the tyre sidewalls can help, it is difficult for it to help enough so that it can overcome the damage done by fitting a stiffer front ARB, and the lowering springs can have an effect too, if the spring rates aren't carefully chosen. Other things like engine mounts also get involved, and there is a danger that, by the time you've finished, you are redesigning the entire suspension system.

Batteries don't get really fully charged these days, unless by fully charged you mean 'as charged as it gets', rather than 'charged enough to give you the rated capacity'. Bosch and Varta batteries are both made by Johnson Controls, so they are probably identical, if you choose the right variants. For Bosch/Varta, there are variants with different guarantee length, but I'm not sure everyone looks at that, rather than just saying 'it is a good brand, I'll buy it'.

I am replying to this as a current Octavia owner, so my reply might not be totally relevant: On a fwd car, with normal loads, I would tend to run one or two psi higher at the front than the real. For high rear loads, particularly for high loads combined with extended periods of high speeds, those pressures might creep up a bit, with 2 - 4 psi extra being the maximum. I don't know what it says on your filler cap/in the manual, but I'd start from there (unless it says something about winter tyres in the manual, when its likely to be bollo misstated nonsense, although, slightly fortunately, no on seems to take any notice of what it says). 31 fr and 30 rear sounds about right for 'normal' use, but YMMV. Those dealer set pressures are mad, unless you are frequently transporting small elephants, and then it won't ride well. whatever pressures you set.

The bits that you've done sound like the most likely bits(did it change at all when you had the work done, or did it stay exactly the same?), so onto more unlikely stuff. I've had a problem where an earlier car wouldn't even stay in lane on a motorway when misfiring - now, I'm not suggesting quite that, but if the engine mounts or the associated rubbers are shot, that could cause the problem that you mention. Has anyone checked engine mounts? Tyres could cause a similar problem, but I'd expected something to change (although I'd have changed them left to right...but still, I would have expected your test to show something up, even if something slightly unexpected). Presumably the pressures are all known to be reasonable (and if you can't double check the pressure readings, do the sidewalls look as if they are reasonably correctly inflated?) While that sounds like wear on one edge of the tyres, or wheel incorrectly mounted, you would have expected something to happen as you moved wheels around. One possibility is if you have wear on the edges of several tyres. So if several tyres were 'bad' and you swapped around bad tyres, you could still have the same outcome. I'm not sure what you say is 'bad' about LE wheels. If more than one is buckled, then almost anything could happen. Taking appropriate precautions, have you jacked up one corner at a time, and spun the wheels to see if they are running straight? And tried pulling the suspension around to see if the wheel moves away from straight ahead. (again with the car chocked so it won't roll away and safely - probably with dual supports - jacked up, and an assistant, just in case. Or, get a garage to do it.)

I'm used to getting, say, 7 years from a 5 year guaranteed battery. I know that by some people's standards that's a bit short, but my expectation is that it would be a few weeks or a month shorter in an s/s car that never used s/s (and exactly the same if the battery was appropriately programmed). I did once do some 'back of a fag packet' calcs on s/s, based on Tiff Needel/fifth gears drive around a busy bit of Brum, and concluded that while you might save £100 per year on fuel, that shrank to more like £10 when you took the excess battery cost in to account. I think that was based on petrol, which at the time, would have been around £1.40. I've got to suspect, by now, with cheaper fuel, you've got a negative saving!

I'm sorry, but: It (the alternator, because the car electronics knows some more stuff, but doesn't usually use it, except in particular conditions) doesn't know the true state of charge of the battery. given a few tolerances and wiring offset, you can argue it would if it knew the temperature, but it doesn't know that (and it can vary throughout the battery, under dynamic conditions) For the cars that I know in detail, a start/stop alternator is the same as an ordinary alternator, it is just controlled differently. If anyone has a different part number for a stop/start alternator, please let me know, because then I will be better informed. The old trick for reverting 'smart charge' to 'old fashioned charge' was to remove the entire smart charge cable; this is designed to work, and should work in the face of Load Dumps, Field Decays, etc. ('should' rather than 'tested and guaranteed'). Removing fewer wires probably does work in the short term, but may not be reliable in transient conditions, as no one even checked out that it ought to work. From the dash controller (whatever it is called on these) there is a signal that can be used to tweak the alternator output, and this is used for the idiot 'micro-hybrid' mode (which saves fuel, but not so much as you'd notice, away from a lab fuel consumption test) as well as start stop There are two types of battery certified for stop/start usage and those are EFB and AGM. EFB are a bit expensive and AGM are a lot expensive. AGM are good though, with about twice the number of rated stop/starts as EFB. My view is that in non-stop/start mode a decent quality Lead Acid battery should be fine, slightly shorter life than in a non stop/start car, and that changing the set-up in the dash controller to 'Normal Lead Acid' will be fine, provided that you never switch stop/start on (if the system will even allow that, once you have set the system to 'Normal Lead Acid battery'). Don't try these tricks with the el-cheapo, cheapo batteries, available from some sources, though. That seems likely a recipe for dissatisfaction. They would have quite a high early failure rate, anyway, and this can only make that worse.

Phil, is it still the case in Germany that if you run your car on tyres lower rated than the car is capable of, that you have to have a warning notice saying so? And, while I'm sure that no one did when I was there, does the Skoda electronic pop-up notice qualify under the regs? (These days, it is really only an issue with Winter tyres and/or performance cars, as tyre speed ratings have climbed over the past ~30 years).

Fortunately, the speed at the top of the tyre is irrelevant. Tyres are tested at a certain rotational speed and load, and that is what is certified as 'good enough'. You may not agree with that definition of 'good enough' as at the end of a ten minute test, the tyre can have tread blocks missing, provided it has enough integrity to hold air (surely the vibration would be enough to put off any real driver in something other than a 'fast and furious' style film???) Anyway, my preference is to have a tyre rated at a speed at least 10 mph higher that any max continuous speed I'm likely to use, 'cos lumps falling off the tyre isn't a good look . Tyres are improving surprisingly quickly, in my view, but still a decent top-spec, or a decent mid-range tyre will be better than a budget. Up to a point grip is a trade-off over longevity, but in a recent tyre test, surprisingly, some of the best tyres for ware were the 'top of the range, grippiest' tyres. So it is probably more accurate to say wear/grip/cost are the parameters being traded off (in reality a tyre is a trade-off of about a dozen identifiable parameters, and if you really want to make a tyre look good on eleven, you'll degrade the twelfth) Michelin have always been happy to do this 'our tyres last longer, without going down to zero wet grip' trick that has been beyond other tyre manufs (or at least, beyond their marketing depts to accept as a solution that anyone will pay for). These days Goodyear and Conti are pushing them close, but it should never have been a surprise that paying more could get you to a better place on the wear/grip trade-off, even if it was most often done to get more grip, and d4mn the wear. If you want to save cash, if there is an acceptable option from one of the 'second brands' of the big boys, that is likely to work better than a true budget, as are some of the 'on the way up' brands - say Falken, for example. Given the rate of progress, it is rarely worth, overall, buying an older design of tyre. And some of the 'odd name, Chinese' suppliers are really bad, either zero grip in the wet, or poor production control.