comments:
Go to Walmart and get a new battery. If you plan on keeping the car for a while, get the good EverStart Maxx Platinum battery, And you won't have to worry about it at all for at least 4 years. As of late, they are some of the best auto batteries on the market, and they have the best warranty as well. I wouldn't let Walmart change my oil or do any work on my car, but they have had the best batteries for several years now. Don't get one from Costco, either. Their Interstate batteries are absolute crap, cost more than Walmart, and have a much worse warranty. Walmart's warranty covers full replacement of the battery for 4 years. Costco's warranty is prorated, and after 2 years, you'll be paying 75% of the cost of a new battery when it fails, and it will fail in less than 3 years. Here's a link to the exact battery you need. This link might get removed if the automoterator thinks it's spam, but I have no affiliation to that company. Frankly, I detest Walmart, but they have the best deal with one of the only two battery manufacturers left in North America, and nobody can beat them. That same manufacturer also makes the exact same batteries sold by AutoZone, but AutoZone charges $100 more for it, and their warranty is harder to deal with. They will want to take the battery out of your car, and put on a tester for 3 hours to make sure it is bad. When you bring a defective battery back to Walmart, they usually swap it out on the spot. Occasionally, they will want to put it on a tester that takes 15 minutes, but not always. Most of the time, they don't even have anybody there that knows how to use the test or, and they just exchange the battery on the spot. That being said, of the maybe 30 or 40 Walmart batteries I've put in my cars and friends' cars, I've only had one go bad, and that was because it was in a car that was parked for months at a time and neglected, and that person left their dome light on while the car was parked for a couple months, completely killing the battery. He couldn't even find the receipt for it, but he brought it back to Walmart, they checked the serial number, and that showed it was less than 4 years old, so they just gave him a new battery. The warranty carries over, so it's not like you get a new 4-year warranty, but at least you'll get something out of it, if anything goes wrong. You already said that you needed to jumpstart the car recently, and have been having battery problems for a couple months, so even if you have other problems with the car, you still need a new battery no matter what. I would get this battery, erase the codes in the computer, and go back to driving as you normally do, making sure to have at least a few trips that last 20 minutes or longer during those cycles so the battery gets recharged. I'd be willing to bet all your problems will go away.